CLIMB THE WIND
by Minisinoo
Summary: Logan and Scott are held prisoner; the descent of the hero and his redemption. Winner of 5 awards, including Hall of Fame. This is dark, if no tragedy. Reader discretion recommended; there's a lot of brutality. The inspiration is Homer's ILIAD. Semi-sequel to AN ACCIDENTAL INTERCEPTION OF FATE, with X-Men 1 in between.
1. Preface

**BRIEF PRELIMINARY (historical) NOTES:**

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><p><em>Climb the Wind<em> was initially written between February, March and April of 2001. That's extremely fast, given the wordcount. It's won 5 awards, including Hall of Fame, and is (arguably) my best-known fanfic novel, certainly up there with _Special, Grail_ (X-Men) and _Finding Himself_ (Harry Potter). But this is the first that gained notoriety. Sometimes I think I should just introduce myself as, "That woman who wrote _Climb the Wind_."

It assumes history in both _X1_, and _An Accidental Interception of Fate_, although it's not necessary to have read the latter. It probably is helpful to have seen the original _X-Men: the Movie_.

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><p><strong>A FEW BASICS (posted withbefore all X-Men novels):**

In my X-Men fiction, I created TWO basic "worlds," each of which shares a common continuity. I re-use these because it's convenient, but that means things can get a bit confusing if one launches into the novels indiscriminately.

The **_chief difference_** between my two worlds involve radically different origins for Cyclops (Scott Summers). Essentially, these two worlds are "movie world" and "comic-based movie world." Or, **_Scott is not an orphan_** vs. **_Scott is an orphan_**. Each does have a "preliminary" or "prequel" novel that explains how the X-Men came to be in that particular "world."

In the first category (non-orphan), the history of Scott is based (loosely) on the history given in the novelization of the FIRST X-Men movie, or _X-Men I_ (dir. Bryan Singer, please don't confuse it with the recent _X-Men: First Class_). _X-Men I_ came out in 2000. The second category is much more heavily based on the comics themselves, and utilizes his official comics history as an orphan.

**_Novels/short stories that utilize the NON-ORPHAN background:_**  
><em>An Accidental Interception of Fate<em> (prequel)  
><em>Climb the Wind<em> (set after X1)  
>[<em>Heyoka<em> & _Children of the Middle Waters_ (not available on FF-net)]  
>(story series) "Man Behind Red Shades" &amp; "Micky Blue Eyes"<br>(short stories) "Letters and Papers from Prison," "Mutant Darwin Awards," "Sleepy Dragon," "101(and not Dalmatians)," "Bitch," "Idle Musings of a Woman at Eighty," "Broken," & "Agonia."

**_Novels/short stories that utilize the comics-based ORPHAN background:_**  
><em>Special: the genesis of Cyclops<em> (prequel)  
><em>Grail: a novel of resurrection<em> (set after X2)  
>(Short stories) "Five Pounds," &amp; "Anahinga,"<br>(Crossovers) "Case X-1743: Unresolved" (X-Files) & "The Room With a Computer" (Harry Potter)

In terms of sheer wordcount, I probably produced more work for X-Men than any other fandom, especially if one also counts the purely comics-based stories (or "comicverse" vs. "movieverse").


	2. 1: Logan

**Note the First:** Not unsurprisingly, CtW will contain serious continuity conflicts with X2, and should be considered AU after X1. Similarities to X2 are entirely coincidental as this was completed 2 years before X2 came out.

**Note the Second (from the original frontpage):** In highly traumatic combat situations, the ties between men exceed the term 'friendship' by modern usage. I direct readers to Jonathan Shay's splendid _Achilles in Vietnam: Combat Trauma and the Undoing of Character_. He says, "Modern American English makes soldiers' love for special comrades into a problem, because the word love evokes sexual and romantic associations. But friendship seems too bland for the passion of care that arises between soldiers in combat" (40). This is a _love_ story; it isn't a _sex_ story, but it annoys me that I need to explain that. Men can love each other without wanting to fuck each other.

**Warning:** This story is intended for an adult audience and contains disturbing material of a graphic and violent nature. It's about war, folks. Sensitive readers beware.

* * *

><p>"Logan - left tunnel. Jean, you're with me. We'll each go down three hundred feet, then retrace. Do not go farther. We're not in a hurry. Look for signs of passage or occupation, then come back and we'll decide what to do next. We should see something down one or the other by three-hundred feet. I don't want to split us up for long."<p>

That was how it began.

We'd had a report of trouble from mutants in the Baltimore subway - a few muggings and worse, a few disappearances; Xavier had feared it might be a group of renegade Morlocks, and had sent us to investigate. Just Cyclops, Jean and me. No one sent the Storm Queen underground. One, she can't call the lightening there. And two, she's as claustrophobic as all hell. So she'd stayed at the mansion with that blue fuzzball they call 'Beast.' This little trip was more likely to be days than hours, and there was still a school to run. Listening to the Lovebirds argue the final details for a wedding less than two months away wasn't my idea of entertainment, but at least it gave me some quality time to razz the Boy Scout.

We'd driven, not flown, and after dark, had suited up to find an access tunnel down into the subway near the area we'd been informed by our FBI contact was the site of most of the assaults. The trains were still on, so we had to be careful, and we'd done reconnaissance as a group until we'd come to a fork in the tunnel: one still in use, one not. Cyclops had given me the one still in use. I might have been irritated to be sent off alone, but had recognized it as a back-handed compliment. He knew I could take care of myself.

Still, I sometimes wonder if what happened next would've happened if Jean had gone with _me_ down the unused tunnel. But I don't blame Summers. He does enough of that for himself.

Water seeped in from the sea and the subway walls were damp with it. It stank of mildew and rot and old piss. There was occasional trash - dirty pages of the _Baltimore Sun_ blown off platforms by the passage of trains, green Wrigley's gum wrappers, a stray condom. Strange place for a tryst. Something had dragged a cat down here, eaten half of it, and left the rest to decompose. I stepped around it, wrinkling my nose. I'd been in worse places. Hell, I'd _slept_ in worse places. That didn't make the sweet-stink better.

I wasn't, however, seeing - or smelling - any signs of recent occupation, and I'd reached the 300 foot mark. Hoping Cyclops and Jean had faired better, I turned and took about three steps.

That was when I heard the explosion and Jean's scream, cut off abruptly, then another explosion and a crash like a wall caving in. Summers was shouting along with other sounds of struggle. I was already moving.

I have metal in my bones; it slows me down. I've learned to adjust, learned agility and balance, but I'll never be fast again. I don't know if it would've made a difference, though, if I'd been a minute quicker. By the time I got back to where the tunnel divided, the sounds coming from up the other side were consonant with a minor war and in the distance, I could see red flashes from Cyclops' beams. Fucking idiot. He was going to bring down the tunnel on them. I headed that way.

By the time I got there, he _had_ brought down half the tunnel, cutting off the enemy retreat, and was crouched behind part of a fallen wall. He had a clear retreat himself, but wasn't taking it.

Jean was sprawled on the ground between them, and us.

The 'them' were not Morlocks. Morlocks didn't have grenade launchers and automatic weapons. Shit. "Who the hell _are_ they?" I yelled at him over the sound of rifles as I slid down in the wet muck at his side behind his makeshift defense wall.

"I have no idea," he shouted back, shooting again and screaming, "Jean, dammit! Crawl this way! I'm covering you!"

Weakly, she raised her head, and at her movement, my heart stopped pounding quite so hard. Then it started up again. I saw what Cyclops was too busy to see. What he didn't want to see.

She was cut nearly in half.

Her face was white from pain and shock, blood glistening around her in the muck, spilling from her mouth and over her chin. She shook her head at me. I felt a brush on my mind, a little like the professor's but much fainter. _Get him out! He won't listen to me. Logan, please! Take care of him. For me._

She lowered her head again, coughed once, and stopped moving.

No one had bothered to explain to me that she and Summers had some kind of permanent mental link. He had a piece of her in his _head_, for God's sake, and the reverse. No wonder he'd been so damn cocky when I'd made a move on her after I'd first gotten to the mansion. I'd ticked him off, to be sure, but not as much as I should have. Later, I came to understand why. How the hell do you fight mental fusion? I'm sure in battle the link was useful, letting them move as one creature.

But.

He knew it the instant she died - he _felt_ her die.

And he just went berserk.

Letting out a sound that wasn't really human, he ripped the visor off. Pure, uncontained energy blasted down the tunnel like a tsunami of red, knocked open the seal he'd put on the enemy retreat just minutes before, and took some of them with it. Took a lot of them with it.

Not enough.

I don't think he noticed, or cared. Visor back on now, he was over the top of the fallen wall and running. To her.

At the time, of course, I had no idea what the hell was going on. I remember shouting at him, "She's _dead_, Summers! Get the hell out!"

He wasn't listening to me. He flipped her over and picked her up as if she weighed nothing. She's as tall as he is, and he doesn't have augmented strength. Instead, he had desperation. Adrenaline is an amazing thing.

He got her most of the way back before the few remaining goons in the tunnel recovered wits enough to shoot at him. It's not that easy to hit a moving object unless you're good. So they went for the larger target of his back, not his head. Luckily, the uniforms have built-in kevlar. He took one hit in his shoulder and another square in the middle of his back. Kevlar or no, the explosive blast of an automatic weapon knocked him senseless over the top of the broken wall, dropping Jean's body at my feet. He landed beside it, all breath gone out of him. I could see now what had been done to her. It looked like a grenade had torn through her, and I wondered later - when I had time to wonder - how she'd managed to live for the few minutes she had . She must have held on by sheer cussedness, to get through to him, drive him away. As soon as she saw me arrive, she could let go. Damn, she must have been in pain. Brave woman. But love is a powerful thing. I don't think I realized until her death just how much they'd loved each other.

But that came to me later. Right at the moment, we had a little problem. Our 'gunman' was flat on his back and I had no weapon besides what lay in my hands.

That's how they caught us.

Oh, I put up a fight. Summers tried, but he was so dazed from grief and the pain of taking two bullet bruises that he wasn't much use and they were in too close for him to get good effect from his visor anyway. He tried to rip it off for a second time - he wasn't too worried about the body count right then - but they'd seen what he could do visorless, so they grabbed his arms and knocked him to his knees, immobilizing him. And then they used him against me. Yanking his hair back, they shoved a gun muzzle so far into his mouth that he choked.

'_Take care of him. For me._' Jean's last words.

I stopped fighting.

They got my hands behind my back, handcuffing me. I could get out of it, but not instantly, and not before the goons could blow out my brains - or his. No fear on his part, though. He just didn't seem to give a damn. I've seen shock like that before - no reaction until they hauled him up and started to force-march us up the tunnel. Then he fought like a leopard, twisting and bucking, screaming, "Jean!" over and over. Hysterical. He was trying to get to the body.

Shit.

I looked away, felt my eyes sting. Not for her. For him. I'd cry for her later.

They finally had to drag him back by the hair and knock him out. He just wasn't sane.

It finally occurred to me to ask one of our captors, "Who the fuck are you, anyway?"

I got a fist in the teeth for my trouble. Then someone knocked me out, too. They must have figured it'd be easier.

* * *

><p>I woke alone in an empty room. White. Completely white. There was absolutely nothing there except a pail in one corner. Also white. Perfect florescent light spilled from four fixtures in the ceiling, too high to reach even if I jumped. I wasn't dressed in my uniform. Instead, I wore some kind of coverall with a zipper down the front, as white as the rest. The whole room smelled of Lysol. Getting my (bare) feet under me, I paced off the space. Eight by eight, roughly, and about eight feet high: all proportional. It was cool enough to be uncomfortable, but not cool enough to give me frostbite, even if I'd been able to get frostbite. No sound at all seeped in from outside.<p>

A White Room. Very effective. The shitheads knew what they were doing.

Whoever they were.

And where the hell had the put the Boy Scout? Was he even alive?

I'm not sure how long I spent in the White Room - long enough to lose all sense of time. Long enough to stop being fastidious about using the pail, either. It wasn't that I cared about pissing into a bucket, but that my heightened senses had to smell it afterwards. They fed me on water and bread but nothing else. No meat. It weakened me, even in that short a time. Occasionally, they emptied the pail. It was all done while I slept, and I must've been drugged because I never woke in the midst of it. I'd still like to know how they managed the drugging. Probably through the ventilation system.

I exercised, I paced, I wondered what Xavier and the others were doing, worried over how Marie would be handling this, and just fretted generally until I reminded myself how little good it was doing. I also replayed that macabre scene in the tunnels over and over. Sometimes I wept.

_Goddamn, Jean. How the hell did you get in the way of a grenade?_

I blamed myself, too, for failing in her final request to get Summers out, even though I'd had no clue what losing her would do to him. I'd never have pegged the Boy Scout for a berserker. At that point, I still didn't understand entirely what had set him off.

* * *

><p>After what I later learned was about five days, I finally came face to face with my captors.<p>

A near-seamless door in one wall opened. I'd been dozing. The sound - after so much silence - yanked me to consciousness and my feet both, and I attacked before the door was even open all the way, hoping for the element of surprise.

A stun stick met me - the kind they use on zoo animals - knocking me five feet backwards on my ass, and it hurt like hell, too. Four guys entered. "Don't try it again, freak," one said.

I popped the claws. Instinct. "Who are you, where am I, and what the fuck do you want?" Predictable questions but I had to start somewhere.

Another man - dressed in a suit, not a uniform - stepped past the guards. He was good looking in that refined-man-in-his-late-fifties kind of way. Even features, attractively greying hair, good teeth a little yellow from nicotine, or coffee, or both. Dark eyes had a glint that screamed intelligence, but it felt wrong, like snow that will blind a man if stared at too long. Lazy-cruel.

"You still have your wits about you," he said, sounding vaguely surprised.

"What'd you expect? That I'd be climbing the walls?"

"They informed me that you have animal senses." His quick glance took in the white emptiness.

Had this been some kind of fucking experiment? "Anyone will start to lose it if left alone long enough without much sensory input, animal senses or not. I'm a man, pal. Not a wild animal. I ain't talking to myself yet or hearing voices."

A cold smile. "How charming. I wish I could say your companion had fared so well."

My gut went cold but I didn't move a muscle. Lunging at him would accomplish nothing. I had to keep him talking, find out what I could - not resist needlessly - and most of all, I had to try to make myself human to him. Those were the rules of a hostage situation. How I knew them, I had no clue, but I knew them. "What happened to him? Where did you take him?"

"He's in a room." The cold smile again. "_Surely_ you didn't expect a map? As for what happened to him - he seems to be ill. That's why I'm here; I thought you might be able to shed some light on the problem before he dies."

I stood up. "Let me see him."

If I could get out of the room - if I could just get out of the room . . .

"That's not possible," the Suit said. "We'll tell you what you need to - "

"Look, pal, I can't say anything if I don't know what's going on. I need to _see_ him, examine him, not listen to you recite some descriptive bullshit."

"Since when did you acquire a medical degree?"

"How do you know I don't have one?"

"_Dr._ Logan?" The cold smile grew thin, but surprisingly, he stepped aside. "I thought it was Dr. Grey. Unfortunately, the good doctor is past the point of performing an examination."

For three breaths, I considered running the Suit through before the goons at the door got me, but that wouldn't do Summers any good. And apparently, they knew our names. That was very bad news. It meant this wasn't random.

"I'll permit you to see him," the Suit said. "But if you try anything, we'll kill you both, starting with him while you watch."

I didn't reply to that. Of course I'd try something if I got a chance - but only if I knew it would work. "Take me to him."

They bound my hands behind my back again, keeping me barefoot and the stun sticks at ready. One of those things could drop an elephant. We went down several corridors, all metal, and the doors had keypads. Surveillance cameras hummed at every juncture, and there were probably infrared trip wires and other fun tricks, too. Little was labeled - no room numbers - and nothing smelled distinctive, only of disinfectant and WD-40. This was a big facility, built for high, government type security. Fuck. We were lab rats in some federal-funded maze. Been there, done that, didn't want a repeat. Something small and cold folded up in my belly.

At least I was out of my room, and could see. If they'd been smart, they'd have blindfolded me.

We went down. I was pretty sure we were already underground in a bunker of some type, but we went down further by elevator, exited, took two corridors and stopped outside a completely unremarkable door. They put bodies between me and the key pad as the Suit punched in the code. But they forgot I could hear, and it was the same damn tones as a touchtone dial. 44-2337-*11. I committed it to memory. The door slid aside.

The Boy Scout looked like shit.

"God," I whispered, completely against my will. They shoved me in.

The room was dim, and stank of day-old puke. There was a bed for him, and one of the familiar pails, but Summers lay against one wall, dressed in a similar coverall to mine but dun in color, and soiled, filthy with repeated retching. They'd blindfolded him, too. Nothing fancy - plain duct tape. Very slowly, cautiously, I moved forward. "One Eye?"

He raised his head, weak, but turning it side to side, seeking. "Logan?" his voice was incredulous, and his lips cracked and bleeding.

"When was the last time you jackasses gave him water?" I snapped behind me.

"He throws it up," the Suit said. "He throws up everything." The man gestured. "High fever, inability to hold down food or liquid. He's dehydrating. That's why you're here."

I knelt down in front of Summers but couldn't touch for the damn cuffs. "Take 'em off," I said, holding out my arms a little.

"I don't think - "

"Get the fucking cuffs off! You think I'm going to use the claws with six goons behind you?"

One of the guards stepped forward to release me. I held still till he moved away; I didn't want to scare them. I didn't want to scare Summers, either. Despite the dimness of the room and his weakness, I could see him trembling, smell his fear - a strong, acid sweat. His face had a slack quality, as if drugged. I laid a hand on his shoulder and he flinched.

Under the tape, his face was covered with bruises, fresh and greening both, and I could see more on his body. They'd beaten the crap out of him, and had burned him with cigarettes all down one arm. Carefully, I unzipped the front of the coverall and checked his torso, afraid he might have bruised kidneys or some other internal injury that could explain his illness. He tried to shove my hands away, but not with affronted modesty. The fear in him had spiked sharply. "Stop, Scott. It's me." No jokes now. No half-insulting names. "I won't hurt you." He quit fighting but the trembling grew worse.

This was crazy. Even drugged, this was Cyclops. What the hell had they done to him?

But as soon as I asked the question, I knew the answer, and examined him anew with dread and too much knowledge. Bruises on his wrists from being handcuffed down. More bruises on his hips from the hard grip of fingers. I let my eyes drop. His coverall was dark brown between the legs. Old blood.

Goddamn motherfucking sons of bitches.

It took every ounce of control I had not to pop the claws and go on rampage. We'd have gotten free or gotten dead, and for ten seconds, either appealed. Then common sense reasserted itself. He wasn't going anywhere in this condition, and I couldn't carry him - not and fight. "Hey kid, I ain't gonna hurt you." I spoke softly, and felt over his abdomen and ribs with impersonal fingers, making sure I didn't go lower than his navel. He let me, or he was just too weak and sick and spaced to fight. When I was done, I carefully covered him up again. I spoke without turning. "If you didn't have him drugged out of his mind, he might be able to hold some food down. And controlling your guards is another good idea. I wouldn't think you'd want your test subjects _contaminated_." I finally looked back at the Suit. He knew exactly what I meant.

But he just shrugged with one shoulder. "He's not permanently damaged. And he's not drugged, either."

"Looks drugged to me, pal."

"He isn't. That's the point, and the problem. He has no _serious_ injuries" - well, maybe not physical, but I didn't correct him - "yet he appears to be fatally ill."

I looked at Summers again. There was foamy spittle on his mouth and I wiped it off absently. Dehydration could also cause mental confusion, not to mention lethargy. "Bring me water."

"I told you, he - "

"Bring it!"

They did as I said, handing me a plastic bottle of Avalon spring water. I opened it and poured a little into the cap, dribbling it between his lips. His tongue moved, seeking. I'd have raised him up to help him drink but was afraid to touch him that much, afraid anything approximating a restraint might set him off, make him fight and hurt himself. I gave him more water, a capful at a time until he'd consumed about a fifth of the bottle. "That's enough. Scott can you understand me?" I didn't expect miracles. If it was a hydration problem, it would take a while for him to start coming out of it. "Can you understand me?"

He made some sound that was vaguely affirmative, but it might have been agreement just to get me to go away. "Do you know what's wrong with you?"

A long, long pause. Then, in a whisper, "Sun."

"What?"

"Sun."

It took me a few minutes, then I remembered something Jean - _God, Jean!_ - had told me once. Summers' optic blasts were fueled by solar energy. "Theoretically," she'd said, "if he were out of the sun long enough - we think seventy-two to ninety-four hours - his eyes would go back to normal."

"Why only 'theoretically'?" I'd asked.

"Because the only time we tried to verify the hypothesis, Scott got violently ill in two days. He wanted to stick out the time, but Hank wouldn't let him. We don't really know what would happen to him if he was kept out of the sun long enough to drain the energy in his head."

This is what would happen to him, I thought.

"How long have we been here?" I asked the Suit.

"Why do you want to know?"

"Because it matters."

The man's expression was pure amusement. "Five days, fourteen hours. Give or take."

I nodded and, reaching up, felt around the duct tape. It must have been there since they'd brought us in; it had that sticky-old quality, and I feared I might rip the skin right off of him if I didn't do this carefully. "Bring me some alcohol, please."

"Why?"

"I'm going to take the goddamn tape off, for starters."

The Suit actually laughed. "You must be joking. You think we'd let you do that?"

"His eyes aren't a danger now."

"And we should believe you?"

"Yes. You wanted to know what's wrong with him, but I think you already know and just wanted me to confirm it." I glared up at the man who stood - just out of striking range - and watched with bird-bright interest. "You put him in here knowing. You wanted to see what would happen if you took him out of the sun. Just like you wanted to see what would happen if you slapped me in a White Room."

The man actually smiled. "What a clever little mutant you are." Then, to a guard. "Get him the alcohol he asked for."

I wasn't sure it had been so clever to let the man know how long it took to drain Summers' power, but done was done, and I wanted to get that goddamn tape off.

I owed Jean.

While the guard had left for the alcohol, I said to the Suit, "If you want him to get better, you'll either have to take him outside or bring a sunlamp in here."

"No sun, no lamp. To expose him to sunlight would rather defeat our purpose."

"Then what the hell did you drag me down here for if you're not going to take my advice?" The man didn't reply, and in any case, the guard was back with the alcohol and a rag. I wet the rag and worked, carefully, at the tape, loosening it a bit at a time without letting any alcohol get in Summers' eyes. When the tape was gone, I used the soaked rag to clean the cuts and burns as best I could. The Suit didn't object. Neither did Summers beyond an incoherent moan here and there from the sting, but his shaking was far worse. I wasn't sure how close he was to losing it completely.

When I was done, I moved to the side - just in case - and said, "Scott, open your eyes."

"Can't," Summers whispered back, his voice still rough but not as bad as before he'd had water. "I'll kill you. Jean says I'll kill you. I kill everything. Everything . . . Jean . . ." His voice broke.

Was he delusional and seeing ghosts, or just caught up in memory? "You won't kill me," I said. "It's been five days. You've been out of the sun for five days, Scott."

Obedient, or maybe just too dazed to care, Summers opened his eyes.

They were blue. Very blue. Somehow, I hadn't expected that. "Hey, kid," I said. Summers blinked. The pupils were highly dilated. I watched sense chase confusion across his face, and confusion chase sense. The return of his sight had helped pull him back from the brink a little, but only a little. He looked so damn young. And while I knew what he could do, had been following him in combat for the better part of eight months since I'd returned from Canada, I still felt irrational anger at Xavier for sending out children to play at superhero.

Then he closed his eyes again and whispered, "Jean." And I watched as one tear squeezed out of the left eye to spill down his face. His lips had gone thin, the jaw hard. It was coming back to him; _he_ was coming back to himself. It would take time, but he was clawing his way out of the fog. The tremors were back, but I was pretty sure these weren't from fear. This was rage. I gripped his hand, and felt a little burn in my own eyes.

"You want some more water?" I asked, hyper-aware of the goons and the Suit behind me.

"Better not," Summers whispered. "My stomach - Just . . . better not."

I turned to look up at the Suit, then asked for what I didn't expect to get. "Let me stay with him. He's going to need water and he's too weak to do much for himself."

The other man cocked his head and gave me that damn smile again. He clearly had the sick kind of personality that enjoyed tormenting just for tormenting's sake. "For now, you may stay."

And he left abruptly, the guards filing out behind. "Shit," I said to the air. "I didn't think he'd agree."

Summers said nothing. I bent to try and lever him up. "Let's get you on the bed, at least."

"No!" It was almost desperate and he actually fought me for a moment with some hidden reserve of strength. Then, more calmly, "If I get sick and soil the sheets, they don't change them for hours."

And they clean up the corners faster? I wanted to ask, but didn't. Let him have his pride.

Casually, I rose to examine the bed. Changed the sheets my ass. These hadn't been changed at all. There were bloodstains still along one edge, in patches further apart than could be explained by twisting. They'd done it to him more than once. They must have shoved him face down and cuffed him to the rail on the opposite side while they had their fun. I glanced back at Summers, who'd curled around himself into a fetal position, though I doubted he realized what he was doing. The kid was too pretty, even with duct tape on his eyes. At least I was here now and the guards weren't likely to try anything while a guy with nine-inch knives in his hands was watching over him.

I was wrong.

Rape is just as effective at dehumanizing men as it is at dehumanizing women - maybe more effective. When women have been held hostage, they're often asked if they were raped. Men usually aren't. It's not supposed to happen to us. If it does, it calls a lot of things into question, starting with our masculinity. And when one suffers but the other doesn't, it's that much worse.

They didn't rape me, not physically. They just forced me to see what they did to him. That's rape, too.

The details aren't important. Essentially, they came in and immobilized me, really before I understood what they were getting ready to do. He knew. He'd been dozing, but he never let himself go under completely. Hypervigilance. Suddenly, he woke with a start and actually scrambled up (amazing what a little water can do), trying to get away. I was up and moving but they had the stun sticks ready. I couldn't even get near them. He fought, probably harder than he had in days because I was there. He bit one of them and got slugged halfway across the room, kicked a few times. Then they forced him down and cuffed him, just like I'd guessed, while they held me at bay. It took four hits from the stun stick before I was flat against a wall and too woozy to fight further.

But I did turn away. I couldn't block out sound or smell, but I didn't have to watch. I could give him that much. I heard them, but I didn't hear _him_. He didn't whimper, didn't cry, didn't scream, didn't protest - and not just because he was insensate.

They finally left: unshackled him, dumped him on the floor, and left. They didn't dress him. I did that, after I cleaned him up. He tried to fight my hands like he'd fought them, but he was far too out of it. I didn't want to waste water but I was going to get him as clean as I could, dammit. His lips were bitten through, and I realized now that it hadn't just been lack of water that had cracked them before. He'd done this every time. No sound. Nothing to give himself away. Goddamn idiot. What did that prove? But underneath my anger was awe, and respect. He'd resisted in the only way he'd been able to.

I dribbled a little more water into him, then sat with him on the floor, not touching. Just there. He lay with his back to me. He didn't weep, but he shuddered sometimes. It wasn't grief. It was fury. I could smell it. Periodically, it shook his whole frame. I tried touching him once but he jerked away and I didn't touch him again. We didn't say anything at all. What the hell was there to say? What words could begin to encompass what he'd suffered in front of me? The leader of the X-Men had been kicked around, spat on, and gang raped. They'd taken everything from him - his wife (or as close as made no difference), his power, and now his dignity. He was twenty-seven years old and stripped down to nothing, except his rage.

* * *

><p>Their tactical error lay in leaving us together for any length of time. A man alone can be beaten down, but together, we were stronger. I'm not really sure why they did it, but then, I had no clue why we were there in the first place. (Of course, it's not the usual custom to explain the experiments to the rats.) So why they made the mistakes they did was just as opaque.<p>

I did figure out a few things. First, it was fairly clear that at least part of their purpose was to discover our weaknesses in order to neutralize us. But they already _had_ us in their power, which meant they could just kill us and neutralize us that way. Finding my weakness or the Boy Scout's wasn't going to help them with Storm or McCoy or the Professor, or any other alpha mutant. We were each unique. Maybe they didn't realize that, I don't know.

Second, as breaking me had involved a White Room and total isolation, the guards had been ordered not to touch me, nor even to let me see them. The kid was a different matter. They just had to keep him out of the sun, and alive. What they did to him beyond that was irrelevant. As for why they did it . . . Well, why do some children enjoy pulling the wings off of flies? I might have memory from only sixteen years or so now, but I'd seen enough to know that if accountability were removed, human beings were more inclined to mindless sadism than the optimists - like Xavier - wanted to admit. Pain and sex were both a thrill.

Why _Summers_ was more of a question. Pretty face, sure. But it wasn't just that. I wasn't ugly. And I wasn't going to kid myself, either. Pile enough guys on me and enough stun sticks and they'd have been able to bring me down, too, and lock me across that goddamn bed. They hadn't even after they'd let me out of the White Room. Maybe it was fear of me, but more likely, I just didn't give off the right vibe. Summers was young and vulnerable, the stiff spine routine only a cover for it. I was old and cynical, and I knew enough about predators that when faced with a choice of prey, they went for vulnerable. Rape is not about sex. It's about _power_. They were proving that they had it and he didn't - proving it over and over. But they proved it to me, too, because I couldn't stop it; I couldn't protect him. All I could do was clean him up afterward. Three times. After the first, he quit fighting me. He just kept his eyes shut and his face averted. And I said nothing. I was gentle and impersonal like a nurse, and I never said a word. After the third time, he let me hold him for a while. I don't know if I'd earned the right, or if he was just so desperate, he'd accept anything friendly with skin on, even me. He shook himself apart in my arms, but didn't weep. I stroked his hair and held on hard. Gentleness isn't always what's needed.

I was also observant, and not just of what this was doing to him. I was observant about the pattern of our "keepers." And I was observant about his health.

He was growing steadily stronger. Getting some water into him had been the turning point, and apparently, once the energy in his head had dissipated, he went back to normal, minus the blasts. He was still weak, but that stemmed from physical abuse and lack of food. They brought me food, and I gave it to him. Soon, they were bringing us both food, and more than just bread and water. They gave us meat. A lot of it. So - they understood I had high protein needs. How much they knew about us was starting to scare me, and baffle me, too. If they knew so much already, what in hell was the point of all this? Apparently, I wasn't part of an experiment at the moment, or not one that involved testing the limits of my powers, so they fed me. Maybe they were watching our interaction, to see what we'd do, but I wasn't into head games so I didn't even try to figure that one out. I had other things to worry over.

How long we were going to be together, for one. I had animal hearing, and this wasn't the White Room. It had normal insulation for high security, but my ears were better and I caught a few snippets of conversation, one of which included "sensory deprivation tank."

Goddamn. I was not going to let them put me in one of those. A White Room was bad enough. If I hadn't been climbing the walls before they'd had to interrupt for Summers' sake, I'd been close enough. No tanks. I'd be sure they killed me first, never mind my debt to Jean. I'd be no good to the kid insane. I could probably make sure they killed us both.

But that was a last ditch resort. I'd rather live to escape. And I was going to have to do it before they decided he was strong enough again and took me out of here. Trouble was, I was sure they expected us to try something while we were together, so they watched us vigilantly. That's where observation of their patterns came in - particularly their patterns when they came for their fun with Summers. They figured we were so psyched out already, they got careless. I hate it, that it took me three times to be sure, but after the third, I had my plan. And after the third, I was pretty certain that he was strong enough to go more than a hundred feet without fainting.

There were no surveillance cameras in the room, but I wasn't sure if the place were bugged. So I tore the bed apart and checked the rest inch by inch, to see. He figured out after a few minutes what I was doing, and helped. Then we examined each other, clothes and skin for implants, came up with nothing. "Clean, I think."

"Stupid," he said. "If they'd had any sense, they'd have bugged the room and put trackers in us."

"I don't think they think we can get away."

He just smiled. That smile scared the shit out of me.

I'd never before been able to see his eyes, so I couldn't know their normal expression - but I was pretty damn sure this wasn't it. Flat frozen blue. I'd seen that look on men before combat, men who'd lost too much. They fought like demons but they were as dangerous to you as to the enemy because they just didn't give a flying fuck if they lived or died, as long as they could kill along the way. I had no qualms about killing, not with these animals. But butchery on rampage wouldn't do either of us any good, and in his core, he wasn't a killer. What he'd done in the tunnel had been shock-motivated self preservation. But if I let him out in his current state, he was going to be an angel of deliberate death - Achilles dragging the body of Hector around the walls of Troy. They'd killed his Patroclus, and his pride.

_God, Jeannie. Wish you were here. I don't know what the hell to do with your boy._

Not that we had much choice. We were going to have to get out before they separated us again.

"Listen," I told him, hunkering down as if they could hear us through the walls. He knelt in front of me. "I've noticed a few things about the goons." He didn't reply, just raised an eyebrow. He'd gone into leader mode like a flipped switch. "They have a pattern, when they . . . come."

"You can say it, Logan. When they come to rape me."

I winced. He gave me that cold smile again, but I wasn't going to say it just to satisfy his need to hurt himself. "Three of them cover me with the stun sticks, four of them take you out. _None of them covers the door._"

He appeared thoughtful at that, then nodded. "Yes. They leave it open. And they come at the same time of the day, too. At least they do now. I'm not as certain about before. I was too ill."

"How can you be sure of the time?"

"I just can."

I wasn't inclined to argue with him. Summers could do strange things with numbers and patterns in his head. They almost had physical form to him. I didn't understand it, but then I couldn't explain some of my own senses either, those beyond the animal ones, like my ability to sense presence. It wasn't a psi-sense, quite, but I _knew_ when I wasn't alone. I'd learned to trust such knowledge. So if he could track time without a watch, I believed him.

"Trouble is," he added, "even though they come at the same time each time, they don't come _every_ day."

That was part of the torture, of course. To anticipate the horror that didn't arrive. But his flat affect was starting to creep me out. You'd have thought he was discussing the weather.

"They didn't come yesterday," I said.

"That doesn't mean they'll come today."

"No, but we should be ready." I studied him a long minute. "How far can you run, do you think?"

"As far as I have to."

"Scott - "

"Get me out of this room, Logan. I'll manage. Get me out of this room and give me a gun. Preferably a pistol. The guards don't carry weapons beyond the sticks when they come in here. I don't know what that means, exactly - "

"Prevents us from any chance of getting a projectile weapon. I'd be surprised if they aren't armed out there, though."

He nodded absently, the thoughtful look having returned. "What'd you see, on your way down?"

"You know we're down?"

"Yes." He didn't elaborate. He knows directions, too. We both have that.

"They took me through about ten halls and then down an elevator three floors, two more halls to here. And yes, I can trace it back. Beyond that, though, we're left to guesses."

"I've got to find the computer core."

"No you don't. We've got to get the fuck out of here."

"Logan, it's not an option. We can't leave this place intact."

"And just what do you plan to do? Waltz in and ask to access their network, pretty please? I may not know a hell of a lot about computers, but I doubt you have the passwords."

He smiled again. "I don't need the passwords. I just need a gun and a couple grenades. I'm not trying to hack it, Logan. I'm going to destroy it. I'm going to bring this whole fucking place down around their ears."

My lips thinned. I should probably have counseled caution. Imagine that - the Wolverine telling Cyclops to practice moderation. But I didn't. I wanted to screw the sons of bitches, too.

"We're going to need more weapons, then, when we get out of here," I said, by way of reply.


	3. 2: Logan

**Notes:** There's lots of blood in this one, folks. Also, while we're often told that Cyclops is leader of the X-Men, it's too rarely shown _why_. But I detest incompetent Scott as much as I detest uneducated Logan.

* * *

><p>We were ready for them. Summers had been right about the time; they came precisely when he'd said they would, and with an actual escape plan in place instead of just a sense of the inevitable, he had a cooler head, was more focused in his fighting technique. Of course, he was also simply stronger physically. If by no means up to his normal speed and power, he wasn't wobbling and falling over his own damn feet.<p>

We followed our usual pattern until they got in the door and had moved away from it. Keeping that door open was essential because otherwise, even if we killed them all, we'd still be stuck behind a lock. There was no access on this side. So Summers backed away as he always did, but let the cot come between the two of us . . . dividing them. They were used to seeing me pop the claws and take swings at the stun sticks, so that was nothing new. But Summers' swift kick to the bed caught them by surprise. It crashed into the back of the legs of two of the three covering me, and the goons went down.

That was all I needed. Six swipes left three disabled stun sticks, two dead goons and one bleeding out on the floor. I could hear running out in the hall - not from the sound of the bed crashing over (kicking him around the furniture had been standard), but from the screams of the guy I'd disemboweled. Grabbing half a stun stick, I shoved just the edge between door and jam. The door opened in, and that concealed the stick from the outside. The approaching guards wouldn't see what jammed it until they'd already tried to close it and failed. That gave me a few extra seconds - enough time to take out two of the goons around Summers. He was on his own for the others. "Leave one alive," I called. "We'll need to question him."

I met the new guards at the door, shoved them back into the hall. Luck was on our side because the surveillance camera had momentarily turned away. I had to the count of five to disable it before it swung back to reveal what was going on. Running and leaping, levering half off the wall, I took it out with my claws; a nine-inch reach is handy sometimes. The guards had gotten the door shoved closed in the meantime and had pulled a gun on me. It had a silencer, so I didn't hear it go off, but I felt the bullet impact high on my left shoulder and punch out the other side. The guy had panicked if he couldn't hit me better than that at under ten paces. The burn was bad but I knew how to deal with pain; it stopped me for only a breath. I remembered what Summers had said about wanting a pistol, so I made sure I gutted only the goon and left the gun intact. The other tried to run; I cut his legs out from under him, then his head from his shoulders. Blood sprayed. Only two of them? The sons of bitches were cocky.

But we had to move, and fast. Security would be watching the camera screens and had probably already noted that one was out, though I think I'd managed to get to it before it could show _why_ it was out. But they weren't stupid. They'd come to investigate - with reinforcements. And they'd know we were free as soon as they saw what was left of the goons.

I went to the keypad and punched in the remembered code from when they'd first brought me down there, held my breath until the lock clicked and I could shove it open. Good. They weren't rotating the codes - high security, but not absurdly high. It saved me the time it would have taken to rip the door out. I entered ready to fight but there was nothing left to fight. Summers had managed fine on his own, optic blasts or no. His expression was . . . interesting. A mix of vindicated satisfaction and fascinated horror. I wondered if he'd ever killed a man before with hands, not eyes. For that matter, I wondered if he'd ever killed a man period, but one of the two I'd left for him was definitely dead. Very messily dead with a broken skull and blood staining the edge of the cot. The other had been flung to the floor about five feet from him. Seeing it was me, Summers relaxed and squatted back down to face his captive. The guy - big, undistinguished federal type - had a broken nose and naked loathing on his face. By contrast, Summers was utterly cold, head tilted sideways a little, and for a moment, with those sharp cheekbones and deep-set eyes, he looked like a bird of prey. "We gotta go," I told him. "Bring the goon."

"I'm not finished yet." The kid's tone gave me the willies.

"Scott" - I used his given name on purpose - "this ain't the time. Bring him."

"Not yet. He's going to tell me where the computer core is." And like a striking snake, his right hand exploded out in a smooth chop direct to the guy's ear. "Aren't you?" Summers asked. The goon spit at him. Summers boxed both ears that time, one instantly after the other. It reminded me that he was a Shotakan _sho dan_ - a first degree black belt - when he wasn't too weak and dazed to employ it.

"We can question him on the way," I said. "If we don't go, we won't ever _get_ to the computer core." Lure him.

Common sense came to the fore long enough. Grabbing the guard by the ear he'd just hit, he yanked him up and swung him around. "Move." As they passed me out the door, I handed him the pistol, one of the new police-issue M99mm Berreta. He took it, smiled, and shoved it against the back of the goon's head. "Feel that? Different kind of gun, you son of a bitch. If you so much as peep when I'm not asking you a question, I'll shove it up _your_ ass and pull the trigger."

I can't even begin to describe the rage and hate in Summers' voice. This wasn't Cyclops. This kid didn't have to be in control the way he was normally. No power to master, no glasses, no visor. Just that rage. It drove him. "Follow this hall left," I said, to distract him. "Then left at the end and right at the first junction. Elevator's there." He nodded, glanced at what was left of the two hallway guards, looked away and frog-marched the goon in front of him. He said nothing about the mess, showed no expression. The goon's face, though, had blanched.

We had two concerns: more guards, and those damn cameras. But I learned just how fine a shot Summers is, even with a pistol instead of the visor. He still had that uncanny gift for aim and trajectory, and a steady hand that could blow out a camera lens from over fifty feet. At that distance, the lens was smaller than a dime.

Amazingly, we got to the elevator without meeting any resistance. "They'll be expecting us to head for an exit from the bunker complex," he said. "So we go down instead of up. Then we can question this piece of shit in peace."

So we went down three floors. He used the goon to cover himself as he exited, but there was no fire from waiting weapons. Shooting out the camera, he slammed the guy back into a wall and shoved the pistol up under his chin while I stood guard. Summers was several inches shorter and probably fifty pounds lighter, but the other guy still looked intimidated. Maybe it was the gun, but I think it might have been the look in Summers' eyes. "I don't have time to fuck around. Unlike you. You've seen what I can do with this; I don't think hitting your brain is any challenge. So, on what floor is the computer core located? And tell us how to get to the stairs."

Damn. Even under this kind of stress, the kid avoided ending sentences with a preposition. But he was no fool. He knew to ask for stairs and get off the elevator; too easy to be caught in an elevator.

The goon just stared back.

"You don't _get it,_ do you?" Summers kneed him in the groin. Hard. The guy jerked but Summers wouldn't let him bend over. "I _will_ kill you. You have until I count to three. One - "

"Okay, you shithead freak! Back off! But you're not going to get out of here."

"We'll see. Tell me what I want to know and I'll let you live."

I noticed that Summers had crossed his fingers on the gun handle. Even now, he couldn't just _lie_. Under other circumstances, I'd have burst out laughing. But here, it was more sick than funny.

"Go down this hall further, turn left, then left again," the guy said. He was sweating. "There's another elevator there and a stairwell beside it. Go up five floors and the computer core is right down the hall it opens on. Now let me go."

Summers laughed. "You are kidding, right?" He yanked the guy off the wall and shoved him ahead of us down the hall. "You're coming, too. You lied, you die."

The second elevator was right where the guy had said it was, but it was guarded - as I was sure the goon had known . Of course, we'd expected that. We hadn't heard any sirens, but we'd been gone from our cage too long. The hunt had to be up by this point, and the empty halls suggested that non-combat personnel had been put on movement restrictions. Guards would be watching all exits, elevators, and stairwells and they'd be organizing a dragnet through the building, floor by floor. Crouching behind a bend in the hall to scope out the enemy, I glanced at Summers and found myself wishing for Jeannie's telepathy to communicate, or his seemingly inexhaustible supply of optic blasts. "We need more ammunition," I whispered.

He nodded, then before I could speak further, moved around the corner, lightening quick, and got off two clean shots before the two guards even realized he was a threat. He wasn't shooting to wound. He just killed them. Then he strolled over to deprive them of their weapons: standard federal issue Sig Sauer P228s, different from the police-style 9mm that he was carrying. Unfortunately, the silencer wouldn't transfer barrels. He checked the clip and chamber of what he had in his hand, shrugged and muttered, "Nine of fifteen," and put it under his arm for a moment, shoved one spare gun in a pocket of his coverall, took the clip out of the other, emptied the chamber and pocketed that, discarded the gun itself and came back to us.

"_Goddamn_," the goon had said, watching him. I was thinking the same, but for different reasons. Killing the goons in the room had been one thing. But how in hell was he going to deal with this later? How was Xavier going to deal with it?

Now understand - I didn't blame him. At no point did I blame him . But that didn't make me less worried about his state of mind when he woke from the nightmare to realize several new souls were chatting up ol' Satan tonight and he'd sent them there without even flinching. This wasn't a video game with a reset button at the end.

"Stairs," he said, simple order, and hauled up the goon.

Still in shock, the man gaped at him and balked. "You're fucking _inhuman_." He glanced at me. "Both of you. I saw what you did to Ron in the hall. Motherfucking mutie _freak_."

The jackass should have kept his mouth shut. Summers slammed him up against a wall, hand gripping his windpipe, and got right in his face. "_I'm_ inhuman? How many times did you _fuck_ me, you son of a bitch? You locked me up in a room like an animal to live with my own shit. You tortured me just for the hell of it, made me sick as a dog just to see what would _happen_. You butchered my finaceé and left her body to rot." He was close to breaking and the other guy's face was red from lack of oxygen. "If I have anything to say about it, you'll see _exactly_ what inhuman can be, before you die."

Well, whatever hope we'd had of the goon's cooperation was blown now. The man was completely spooked; I could smell it, see his eye roll white like a horse's. He knew Summers wouldn't let him live and had no reason to help us. "Scott," I said, "go make sure the stairwell doesn't have any cameras, eh?"

Summers glanced at me - calculating - then smiled that alarming smile and shoved the guard in my direction. But he did as I'd asked. I decided not to count my blessings just yet. To the goon, I said, "Look, pal, the way I see it, you got two choices. I won't pretend you'll see another sunrise. But if you behave, I'll be sure it's me who kills you quick. If you don't, I'll let ol' Cyclops do whatever the hell he wants. He's a real creative guy, and I think he's just a little bit pissed." I shoved the goon across the hall towards the stairwell door. "You said five flights up?"

The guy was too stunned to speak, but nodded. The good cop / bad cop routine had its virtues, despite the irony of who was playing which.

We reached the computer core without further incident, mostly because they didn't expect us to go there. They assumed we'd be trying to escape and dragged the floors accordingly. Summers had two clips worth of ammo for the Sig Sauer, plus what was left in his 9mm (two shots, he said). There were only four unarmed techie geeks in the core, not even guards. They were eating a pizza. I covered our pet goon with my claws while Summers took out the cameras first. The guys gaped and one, pizza slice still in hand, ran for a fire extinguisher on the wall. A single shot pierced the back of his neck and he landed spread-eagled. Summers still wasn't aiming to wound and didn't seem to care if they were guards or not, armed or not. Nor did he wait for the other three to try anything, just shot them cold. One fell on the pizza box, knocking it to the ground. "We don't have time to tie them up," he said. "And I don't trust them alive otherwise." It was perfectly lucid. And perfectly brutal.

I stopped being just worried about him then, and grew scared. I'd once stood where he was. My full memories began on the day I'd escaped the facility where they'd made me into a living slice-n-dice machine. He hadn't even begun to approach the body count I'd run up that night, but I was sure he could, and with as little mercy. Not all my nightmares had to do with what had been done to me. Some concerned what I'd done back, and there's a special corner of hell reserved for memories like that. I'd like to spare the kid. Unfortunately, I couldn't take the damn guns away from him. We needed his skill too badly.

He'd been using the Sig Sauer, too. No silencer. The shots had echoed loud. I slammed and locked the door, but it'd give us only a minute of grace. He was wasting no time. Methodically, he shot up the housing of every machine in the joint. A spray of metal and sparks. With sick humor, I was reminded of Dilbert newspaper cartoons.

Now, audible sirens were going off. Red lights flashed. Even the damn sprinkler system came on, drenching us in seconds.

With all the racket, you wouldn't think I'd have been able to hear the arrival of the enemy cavalry, much less the click of the door unlocking, but I did. Grabbing the goon, I swung him around in front of my body for cover and yelled, "Here they come, kid!"

The door blew in at that same moment and a dozen guards burst through, automatic weapons blazing. The guard I held yelled to them and I put my claws through his chest even as someone else's fire hit him from the other side. Double-dead. Retracting, I dove under a table while Summers started picking them off. I wished for a gun of my own, even if I wasn't half the shot he was. Hand-to-hand isn't always an option. He laid down cover for me so I could reach him, darting in Z's from computer table to computer table.

I couldn't believe he was hitting more than he was missing, even from cover, with the sprinklers on, and under fire from multiple angles. He'd pop up to aim and shoot before they could possibly get a similar bead on him. Those mutant eyes. Predator eyes, more even than mine. All he needed was a brief flash of motion, or just the memory of it. I'd asked him once, during a rare hour of conversation in our captivity, if he could see colors now. He'd shaken his head. "My mutation altered my vision permanently, Logan. I don't have color rods in my eyes any more, or not many. The only color I see clearly is red, even without the blasts. My eyes are just different. Hank says I see like a cat - minus the night vision, though I'd probably have night vision, too, if not for the glasses. But that's why I'm so easily distracted by motion."

"So crowds drive you crazy?" They did me, as well.

But he'd shaken his head again. "In crowds, there's so much motion, it's meaningless. It's situations like, say, supper at the mansion that throw me. Or a classroom of students. I always know when St. John and Jubilee are passing notes. I just ignore it most of the time." He'd grinned. "In large groups, there's too much motion, but at the same time, not enough to blur like a crowd. It took me a while to learn to focus and not try to look in six directions at once."

I'd never thought of that, but it helped to explain his perpetually uptight demeanor, and why when he was with only one or two people, he might relax a bit.

Now, though, that difference was saving our lives. Bam, bam, bam, bam, bam. A regular lone ranger. Until he ran out of ammunition. There are only so many bullets in a gun even with an extra clip.

We'd been driven back behind a stairwell. "Fuck!" he swore when the second clip ran out, more enraged than frightened, and slung the gun itself. Amazingly, it connected with the head of one of the goons and the man went down. That left three, and no doubt more on the way. They'd quit firing when he did, and one was talking into a radio. They didn't charge us, as they knew I was back here. They'd wait for reinforcements so they could overpower us with sheer numbers. Summers was pressed up against the wall beside the corner edge and I'd squatted down to peer out past his legs through the sprinkler shower. Someone shot at me and I ducked back.

"If I distract them, can you get to that one?" I whispered, pointing to the dead goon nearest us.

"Yeah, but what are you going to do?"

"Play moving target."

He grabbed for me. "Logan!"

"I have a healing factor. You don't." And I ducked out before he could get a good grip.

Bullets hurt. They burn going in, jolting you with the impact, and they tear going out. If they go out. Even moving, I took three bullets before Summers had reached the guard's body, retrieved the gun, and finished off our opponents. Then he leapt a table to reach me where I'd collapsed against the rear wall, hauling me up in his arms. Water pelted my face. "Logan!"

"Still breathing, kid."

"You stupid shithead!"

"Why, you're welcome, dick."

He laughed. It was the first time I'd heard him actually laugh since Jeannie had died. But he was crying in relief, too, or maybe it was just sprinkler water. "Can you walk?"

"Think so."

I let him help me up. The wounds were closing already and the pain fading - except for my hip. The bullet had hit bone and hadn't come out again. My body was trying to close around it and didn't like the interference. He handed me the gun he had. "Listen for more guards."

I nodded and gritted my teeth, trying to ignore the pain. He fetched a new gun, then got busy emptying clips and shoving extra ammunition in his pockets. When he'd finished stocking up, he completed what he'd begun on the banks of computers, then came back to me, frowning to see my frown. "What's wrong? More men?"

"Not yet, but I've got a bullet still in my hip. I'm going to slow you down, kid."

"So you'll slow me down. I'm not moving at top speed, either." He got an arm around my waist and let me lean on him for a change. "Come on, Wolverine." On the way to the door, he spied the guard we'd brought in, and paused. I watched his jaw work in frustration. Taking aim, he started firing round after round into the dead man's head, pulverizing it like target practice with a watermelon. "Son of a bitch," he hissed. "_Son of a bitch_." There was nothing sane in his face.

"Jesus Fucking Christ, Summers! Snap out of it! He's dead!" But yelling didn't get through. I had to shake him.

He started to turn on me, stopped abruptly. He was breathing hard. Low, he said, "He was there, Logan, _every damn time_."

And I understood why Summers had singled him out as the one to live. The kid really had planned to kill him slowly later, as he'd threatened, and I was glad for giving the goon the death he'd gotten. Not from pity, but Summers was going to have enough to live with later. I'd let him kill but I wasn't going to let him torture. "Let's go," I told him.

He took a breath and nodded, then helped me out the door. We were on our own to find an exit through a half-lit hell of emergency lights and sirens. "I think you got their attention," I muttered to him. At least we didn't need to worry about cameras any more.

* * *

><p>Getting to the top was agony for me. We had to go up stairs, flights and flights of stairs interrupted by having to duck periodically onto floors or run when we heard guards in the stairwell, and each step grated on my wounded hip. Pain interferes with my ability to think clearly, triggering the animal instincts that normally I manage to keep at bay. My fight-or-flight drive is stronger, and a healing factor makes me bad at dealing with chronic pain. Short, sharp, intense - sure. I punctured my own lungs to save Marie, and I can bear about anything briefly because I know it won't last. But high pain tolerance isn't <em>long-term<em> pain tolerance. I used to think Summers a wimp, but the last eight months at the mansion had changed my mind. He's got the other side of the coin. He suffers every day of his life - headaches from his power, mild to severe, and accompanying neck and shoulder pain from the tension. I see him rub his neck a lot, when he thinks no one is looking, and once or twice when he disappeared for a day or two, Jean told me he was down with a migraine. If he doesn't take aspirin soon enough after it reaches a certain level, he winds up in a dark room unable to move without throwing up because of the pressure inside his skull. But he functions, and functions mostly normally. Marie said that watching him during the time I'd been away had taught her something about "grin and bear it," whether the pain was physical or psychological.

And I confess, that had irritated me, to know he'd taught her something I couldn't.

But now he was teaching it to me. By talking to me. Continually. There's never been a lot of love lost, not to mention conversation, between us. Even the past several days that we'd spent locked up, we hadn't talked much, if for different reasons. Now, he chattered like a magpie as we made our way up the stairs in dim emergency-light. He verbalized his decision-making process, asked my opinion, made cynical cracks about our captors with that wicked razor-humor that saves him from geek-dom - anything he could think of to give me a focus outside the pain in my hip. When I snarled at one point, "Would you please shut the fuck up?" he said only, "No. Get your mind off it, Logan."

We ran into two more groups of the enemy. The first was an isolated trio with whom we came face-to-face at a stairwell exit; their own surprise killed them when they froze for three fateful seconds. The second was in a hallway. We walked out of a door smack on top of a group that was comprised of the Suit - the same who'd taken me from my cage to Summers - and seven secret service men. I hadn't even heard them: the distraction of pain. The Suit was as startled to see us as we were to see him. Clearly, they hadn't been hunting us down; they'd been getting him out. Between shooting up the computer core and remaining stubbornly on the loose, we must have scared them into evacuating all the High-n-Mighty Muckity-Mucks.

Summers had his vendettas. I had mine. Hip be damned, I wanted to flay that son of a bitch with his self-satisfied smirk. He was the man who'd put me in that damn White Room, and I was moving almost before they registered us. But secret service were better than mere guards. Within a second, they had him shoved to the corridor floor, two bodies on top, as the rest pulled weapons on us. As with the camera, I tried racing half up a wall to come down on them from above, even as Summers was shooting. At near point-blank range, it required speed and cool rather than skill. I heard men scream, and hoped the kid didn't take me out with friendly fire. Unfortunately, my hip didn't obey me this time when I hit the wall. It gave, and I collapsed to the floor. Ironically, that probably saved my life, or at least saved me from being seriously bullet-ridden. Automatic shot cut a swathe in the plaster where I'd have been, while I wound up at ankle level, claws raking. Service men fell and I finished the job on what was left of them, including the two covering the Suit, then I yanked the man to his knees. "So glad to see you again, pal," I said and rammed claws home through his belly, jerked up through breastbone, heart and lungs. Painful and bloody, but quick.

Then I glanced around. Scott was down on his ass against the door behind. His left hand held his right side, and his right hand still gripped the gun, now resting between his knees. His face looked startled. My gut twisted. "Fuck." I was almost afraid to look, but crawled over to pry his hand up anyway.

"It's not bad," he said, and it didn't seem to be, but when he tried to stand, he almost fell. Not from the wound itself, but from simple shock. He was hyperventilating.

"Slow down the breathing, kid," I told him, and somehow got him into a closet. We'd discovered that the closets were among the few rooms not sealed shut when he'd destroyed the computers. "On the floor," I ordered. "Head between your knees." It was a janitor's closet, with sink. I washed blood off my hands and coverall sleeves. They were getting too sticky.

"We can't take the time - "

"Shut the fuck up!" I got right in his face. "You pass out, I can't carry you. Got that?" He nodded and did as I said. I cut the side of his coverall with a claw to examine the wound. We'd lucked out; it truly wasn't bad: simple puncture at the very edge of his abdomen, with bullet exiting the other side and probable damage only to the muscle. It wasn't far enough in to have hit an intestine. "The burn'll pass."

"For _you_, jackass. Hurts like hell for me."

"Treat it like you do one of your headaches. I know you can handle it. Just don't strain it - blood loss is your chief worry right now."

He nodded and forced his breathing to even out, though he continued to sweat. He shifted his grip on the gun. A Colt .45 this time, sleek and black and deadly in his hand. "You hear anything out there?" he asked me.

I listened. "Not a footfall."

"They're waiting at ground level. They know we have to get out and there can't be that many exits. They'll have their men concentrated at those points."

He sounded resigned and fingered the gun. Clearly, he didn't expect us to live. Hell, I didn't expect us to live. "Better to die this way," I told him. He just nodded again, grimly.

But abruptly his expression changed and his chin jerked up. "What the hell am I thinking? Logan, who says we have to use the fucking _doors_?"

"What? You think they got windows underground?"

"No. But they do have _air vents_."

"Shit." We just looked at each other. "They'll have somebody covering those, too," I added. "It's an old trick."

"Yeah, but I doubt they'll send the same number of men as they'll have covering elevators and stairs. It may be an old trick but I almost didn't remember it, and neither did you."

On the way out, he exchanged guns again for another Berreta because it had a double-stacked clip - more shots, if less power - then picked up a spare and more clips. Then we found a vent and wriggled in. Smooth silver aluminum. Almost too narrow. Between wounds, exhaustion, and maltreatment, neither of us was up to hauling our bodies forward on elbows and knees, or climbing vertically, back against one side and feet pressed to the other. But when it's a matter of life or death, you manage. Ahead of me, he stopped a few times so we could catch our breaths. "You okay, Logan?" he asked at one point.

"Shut the fuck up and keep moving, kid."

As it turned out, the air vent dumped us right into the generators. I heard his hiss of surprise, and emerged in time to see him break up laughing like some demented schoolboy. "Of _course_ it's at ground level," he muttered, mostly to himself, and moved toward the machines, studied them a moment. There were two banks of them, one on either side of a short aisle, bathed in the same red emergency lighting that had lit the rest of the building since he'd knocked out the computers. But these didn't rely on computers to keep functioning, at least, not all of them. A few did show dead on the dials. "I think I'll give them something else to worry about, besides us," he said, and started flipping switches.

"Shit!" I tried to grab for him. "You'll overload it!"

"That's the idea." The hum increased. "We won't be in here, Logan." He had to shoot his way through the lock on the gate covering the last machine, probably the chief generator, then repeated with it what he'd done to the others. Finished, he grabbed me and shoved me towards the door, pushing his spare gun into my hand (I'd lost mine at some point). "Out, low. You roll left, me right. Converge on their flanks."

"Check."

Men were indeed waiting on us, but as we'd guessed, many fewer than would've been covering normal exits. It was also dark outside. And overcast. That helped a lot. But they were shooting as soon as the door cracked; Summers shot back. I really hate guns. I'm no good with them but I got off a few rounds, and didn't acquire any more bullets. I heard him cry out once, hoped he wasn't hit worse than before. Hoped he wasn't dead.

He wasn't. Our flanking tactic worked, pinchered them between us. I trusted he wouldn't hit me while he picked them off. I'd given up the gun already, took out two with claws. There were only six. I bent to search one - we needed shoes - but Summers was grabbing me and hauling me off towards a small copse of trees, shoving me down in the dirt on my face.

Just in time. The building went up behind us, dirt erupting God knew how many feet in the air, concrete and twisted metal with it. Trees offered some protection but we were still pelted by a few - fortunately small - bits of debris. We could hear more eruptions in the ground below, and the earth shook.

Well, he'd wanted to bring the place down around their ears. He'd done a pretty damn good job.

As the explosions lessened, we crawled a little deeper into the underbrush beneath the trees, hid, and watched. Men ran helter-skelter out there, but Summers had been right. They had other things to worry about just now. He clutched his left shoulder with his hand and pressed his elbow to his wounded side. When I glanced over, he said, "It just grazed me this time."

"Lady Luck must be your whore."

He didn't reply immediately, finally spoke. "Where was she eleven days ago? Think she might have been jealous of Jean?"

I could've kicked myself, and turned instead to watch the dark shapes of men fleeing. "We need shoes," I said, changing the subject. We were on the edge of a large field. The bunker must have been buried beneath, down hundreds of feet.

"We need some money, too," he added. "You stay here; you're still having trouble walking. I'll try to get back to the guards without anyone spotting me. What size shoe do you wear?"

I just stared at him in the dark. "You're going to go _shoe shopping_, One Eye?"

"Just tell me!"

"Twelve."

"One size up from me." And he was gone. I held my breath and waited. In less than five minutes, he was back, even more grim-faced. He tossed me shoes. "They're too big, but better big than small. Put them on. We've got to get away from here before any emergency vehicles arrive. And Logan, look at this." He had a pair of jackets, too - black jackets which the outside guards had been wearing. He flipped one so I could see the back.

A great big FBI in white.

"Holy fucking Christ."

Xavier's contact - the one who'd told us about mutants in the subway tunnels in the first place - had been FBI.

But it was cold out here, so I grabbed the jacket and put it on. "You find any money?"

A shake of the head.

Damn. Well, we had shoes and jackets. Two out of three wasn't bad.

* * *

><p>Now that we were free, reaction shock was setting in, not to mention trauma from our wounds. We wobbled and stumbled our way through the dense undergrowth. Judging by the fauna, we were still in the northeast somewhere. It was slow going. March-bare branches and brambles pulled at us, cutting skin and slowing us down. I healed; he didn't. At least without his glasses, he did seem to have a predator's night vision, like me. His pupils were preternaturally expanded. It kept us both from falling into ditches or den holes, but it was getting harder to think. When thwarted at one point by a simple barbed-wire fence, he stared at it dumbly, looking ready to cry in frustration despite what we'd just crawled out of. I popped the claws to cut through it, and we kept moving, didn't say a word for perhaps two miles. I suspect we were both as stunned by what the jackets meant, as we were by all of the rest of it.<p>

The FBI. The fucking U.S. government. The question was _why_? Xavier's little X-Men project was known to a handful of high-placed feds - and approved of. Supposedly.

Yet they'd known entirely too much about us - the kind of information that came only from the_ inside_.

"Scott."

"Yeah?"

"What motherfucker sold us out?"

"I have no idea, but I'm going to make bacon out of the pig when I learn."

"We've got to alert the professor."

"_No shit_, Logan. Why do you think _I'm still on my feet_?"

I didn't snap back. If I felt betrayed, what must he feel? "We need sleep, too, kid." I was worried about his blood loss. Even in the dark, I could see that his right side beneath the jacket was dark and wet, and his stumbling was getting worse. I made him stop so I could wrap his abdomen with strips cut from the bottom of a jacket.

"We need to find shelter, first," he said while I worked. "Someplace we can hide." He ran a hand over his cheek. Almost two weeks' growth had given us both decent stubble, and neither of us had seen a shower since we'd been taken. I'd grown used to our stink, but combined with the weird array of our clothing - not to mention all the blood - we'd probably scare the shit out of anyone we met. As if reading my thoughts, he said, "We don't dare go where we might be seen by civilians, but maybe we can find a barn the horses will share." Through the underbrush, off to our right, we could see a stretch of expensive semi-rural burbs stitched across gently rolling hills - triple-story homes that probably started at half a million. Yet a few older farm houses persisted here and there, and some still had barns or stables. "There may be people looking for us," he added.

"I doubt it, kid."

"You want to bet our lives on it?" So much anger and no where for it to go but at me.

"No," I said mildly.

He breathed out. "Sorry."

"S'okay." I finished tying off the makeshift bandage.

We stumbled finally onto a double-lane country road. Summers said it was a little after midnight, but we stayed near the undergrowth along the side so we could duck out of sight if a car came. One or two did, but mostly it remained deserted. We saw a small sign, a reflective green and white department of transportation milage marker that read: **BOYDS 3**.

"Boyds, Boyds," he muttered to himself. "The name's familiar."

"Ya got me."

We kept walking. Two minutes later, he said, "Boyds, Maryland. We're just north of Germantown, and D.C."

If I didn't know much about the geography of the U.S. Northeast, I did know that Washington wasn't far from the Baltimore subways where we'd been caught. Still, how did he remember that kind of geography shit? Did he study maps for fun in his spare time? But I had to admit, it came in handy.

And it just brought us right back to the whole federal-involvement issue. How deep did this go? We were just north of Washington, D.C., wearing FBI jackets we'd taken from guards trying to prevent our escape from a very expensive, high-security bunker facility.

It was at that moment I heard the sound: the soft engine-whine of an aircraft at low altitude. He couldn't hear it yet. Grabbing his arm, I hauled him to a stop and looked around for cover. "What is it?" he asked, but now he heard it, too, and glanced up. "The Blackbird!"

I've never heard so much relief, and so much apprehension, in two words.

* * *

><p>I learned later that ever since our disappearance, the professor had practically lived in Cerebro, waiting, searching. Hoping. But the bunker in which we'd been held had blocked him from sensing us. I doubt he'd have kept trying so long for me, but Jean and Scott had been his first students. His children. He'd have died and gone to hell before he'd have given up on them, same as I would've felt for Marie.<p>

So within minutes of our re-emergence - and despite the hour - he'd sensed our minds and sent off Beast and Storm in the X-jet to fetch us. Good thing we were wandering around in the country; it made landing easier.

But instead of running for the jet that set down in a nearby field, Summers collapsed in the cold dirt at the edge of the tree line. It was as if, now that rescue was immanent, he couldn't hold himself up any longer. The plane engines shut off and the door popped open to reveal the Blue Guy. I waved and McCoy hauled ass in our direction. Damn, for someone over three hundred pounds, he could move when he wanted to. He slowed his pace about ten feet from us, hesitated, and came forward. Glancing at me, swaying on my feet, he decided I wasn't in immediate danger and knelt down in front of Summers instead. The kid had drawn up his knees to rest his forearms and head on them. "Scott? Where's Jean?"

Summers looked up and McCoy flinched back instinctively as soon as he could see Summers' unvisored face.

"Oh, my god!"

But that wasn't McCoy. The Storm Queen had joined us and fell down in front of Summers to grab him, hugging tight. I'd never seen her that emotional. "Your eyes! Scott, what _happened_?"

"Cyclops?" McCoy asked again. "Where's Jean?"

Summers broke. Pushing his face against Ororo's neck, he let the tears take him, shook his head back and forth violently. Whatever he was saying, it wasn't coherent. But it didn't need to be; it was obvious. We were here and Jean wasn't. McCoy looked away and put one big, clawed hand up to his face while the Storm Queen reached around to grip his other hand without letting go of Summers, who still clung to her as if his life depended on it. Overhead, clouds gathered and the thunder rolled, resplendent with all the grief her face concealed. "I'm so sorry," she whispered, over and over. "I am so sorry, Scott."

I might have felt abandoned as I watched them grieve together, but these three - and Jean - had been at the core of the professor's dream for years. I couldn't blame them for closing in around each other just then.

McCoy pulled himself together first, wiping his eyes and moving forward to pry Summers free of Ororo so he could check him over. He found the bullet wounds. "We need to get these disinfected and wrapped better, and an IV in him to make up for fluid loss. I have my jump bag on the Bird. Ro, help him get over there."

Storm hauled Summers up as McCoy came to check me. "I'm fine," I said, "except for the bullet still in my left hip. My healing factor is none too happy about that."

"Interesting." But his famous curiosity wasn't really focused just now on the way my mutation worked. "What happened, Logan?"

I explained - terse, succinct, and glossing over a lot. I'm sure he could tell, but he didn't press. Now wasn't the time for a debriefing. He just glanced back at Storm leading Scott toward the plane. The only question he had concerned Jean's death. "Was it quick? Did she suffer?"

"She didn't suffer."

So I lied. For a few minutes, she'd _suffered_, but he didn't need to know that. Nobody needed to know that, except me and maybe the professor. Let them take comfort in thinking she'd died fast. Maybe Scott knew, but he'd never said anything about it. In fact, not once during our captivity had he talked about her death unless I counted a reference during his threat to the goon. The few times he'd mentioned her, it had concerned their life before. But he wasn't in denial. He'd never used the present tense, even accidentally. "I guess her body hasn't turned up?" I asked.

"No. And we searched the subways tunnels. Repeatedly."

"Hank, you see the jackets?" I turned so he could see mine, too.

"Yes."

"We took them off the men who were trying to prevent us from getting away."

His head jerked up, but he didn't reply. McCoy is anything but dumb. I could see him adding it all together.

"They knew our names, our powers," I explained. "They knew way too much about us. Radio the professor as soon as we're in the air."

He nodded. "I shall. But I doubt they'll attempt anything immediately."

"Probably not, but do you want to take that chance? We have no idea how far this goes, if the military's involved. What if they attack us before we can get home?"

"Let them try, Logan." All trace of Hank's habitual lightness had disappeared. "Just let them try. I've been flying that plane longer than Scott. Hell, I _built_ it. The only thing that could catch us is another Blackbird. And unlike the SR-71 which provided the basic frame, ours is heavily armed."

He led me across the field and, back on board, tended Summers' wounds then got an IV into him before lifting off. My injuries would have to wait. "I'm not taking the bullet out here," he said. "We'll do that when we reach the mansion." He gave me painkillers instead. I hoped my body didn't neutralize them before they did me any good.

McCoy flew with Storm as his co-pilot. Summers was slumped under a blanket in the seat behind McCoy - Jean's old chair. The kid had closed his eyes and zoned out. He wasn't asleep - I could tell from his breathing - but he'd quit responding to outside stimuli. McCoy spoke on the radio to Xavier while Ororo asked me questions. With flight time on our hands, I gave her a more complete account, including assurances that Scott's power wasn't gone, just drained. She kept glancing at him, but I couldn't tell if it was with concern and pity, or in shock at being able to see his whole face. He looked younger than her, though I knew he was the elder by a couple years. I guess I'd gotten used to his appearance and realized abruptly that it would be frustrating to have him locked behind rose quartz again. How easily we forget to what degree we depend on reading a man's eyes to understand him. I'd never understood Cyclops. But I understood the blue-eyed kid strapped in across the aisle from me.

"Hey," I said, reaching over to grip his forearm briefly, pat it. "We're going home, One Eye."

He nodded.

And then the tears started again - slow slide out from under closed lids, down his cheeks to his chin, dripping off onto the blanket . He didn't bother to wipe them, and they didn't stop the whole way back. The rest of us found something else to look at. It hurt too much to look at him.

He was going home, all right. He was going home to an empty double bed and an ivory lace wedding dress that would never be worn.

_God, Jean. God._


	4. 3: Logan

**Notes:** This particular chapter deals with what you're rarely told in fiction: the physical aftermath of rape on a man. It's done from a medical perspective, but folks, it's not pretty. If you are a survivor of violent rape (male or female), I recommend caution in reading.

* * *

><p>The Blackbird settled down into the hangar like a cat curling itself into a box, metal doors sliding shut above and bright lights stabbing on. Storm got busy with the plane shut-down while McCoy slipped out of the pilot seat to check the kid. Summers had finally fallen asleep somewhere over Manhattan from an exhaustion as much emotional as physical, but I'd found myself waking up the closer I got to home. Now, looking out the cockpit window, I could see Marie waiting with the professor near the door to the hangar, and bad hip or no, I couldn't get out of the damn plane fast enough. As soon as she spotted me, coming off the stairs, she was running forward to throw herself into my arms. I caught her, crushing her tightly - something clean, something innocent to hang on to. My heart was pounding with forty kinds of feelings. "Hey, kid. You miss me, or something?"<p>

Sobbing, she hit at me in frustration, couldn't even speak. I just hugged her again. "I'm home," I said into her hair. "It's okay, Marie. I'm home now." I don't think I let go of her for a full minute.

When I did, it was in time to see the imperturbable Charles Xavier slumped in his chair, weeping without a sound. He'd motored forward while I'd held Marie, and now Hank McCoy stood in front of him, face impassive, an unconscious Cyclops in his arms. McCoy must have given Summers something to keep him under before he unstrapped him because the kid's head lolled in a way that said he was far more deeply out than mere sleep would render. He looked like a doll in McCoy's grip. A broken doll - all over bruises and filth, old blood and starved boney angles. The full hanger light was unforgiving, and beside me, Marie sucked in breath. Even that echoed in the space.

"I need to get him to the infirmary," McCoy said, then glanced at me. "Logan, I should examine you as well, and we must remove the bullet. Please follow."

I nodded once. But I wasn't going down there for me. I was going for the kid. There were things McCoy needed to know, things that he should check before Summers woke again and refused to let him.

Fortunately, the infirmary wasn't far. My hip hadn't let up at all. One hand clasped firmly around my waist, the other gripping my elbow inside the sleeve of the FBI jacket, Marie helped me walk out the door and down the hall. Her eyes were huge and liquid with a pity I didn't need, and there were dark circles beneath. "When's the last time you slept, Marie?"

"When's the last time _you_ slept, Logan?"

"I heal, darlin'."

She didn't reply to that. My limp said that even the Wolverine had limits.

After a moment, she nodded towards McCoy's back, as he carried Summers in front of us, and asked softly, "Is Cyclops going to be okay?"

_Okay?_ The question was ludicrous. He wasn't going to be _okay_ for a long time, if ever. "He'll live." It was more brusque than I'd meant, but I didn't want to explain to her the extent of what had happened - wanted to protect her from all that. Not this child. I'd never let anything happen to this child. I'd failed Jean, and then Scott. I wasn't going to fail Marie. "I may need to spend some time with ol' Old Eye over the next few days, kid. You understand?"

She nodded, emphatic and quick. "Of course! It's Mr. Summers." As if that explained something. Maybe it did. Summers enjoyed a strange status with the kids, especially among the older ones like Marie. "Logan, the professor said that Dr. Grey - That Dr. Grey is - " She cut off, as if she couldn't quite find the nerve to spit it out.

Voice flat, I said, "Jean's dead." I didn't look at her. I couldn't feel it yet. I'd seen Jean die twelve days ago, but I still couldn't feel it past the superficial.

Marie had put up the back of a hand to her mouth, sobbing once. And as much as I loved her, I was suddenly annoyed - annoyed at a display that wasn't real, or at least wasn't personal. I knew kids tended to melodrama; everything was a crisis. But I had less patience for that just now than usual. Marie cried for the general shock of death, not because she'd particularly miss Jean. Remembering Summers' tears on the plane, quiet and helpless, this was vulgar.

We'd reached the infirmary, stopped inside the door. To avoid saying something to Marie that I'd regret, I watched McCoy lay Summers on the center exam table and start cutting the coverall off of him while Xavier assisted. "Go on up to your room," I told her finally. "Get some sleep. I need to talk to Dr. McCoy. I'll see you tomorrow, kid." And I brushed a thumb over her cheek - too fast for her deadly skin to register it - to make the words seem less like a dismissal. "You really need some sleep."

"Ain't no one sleeping in the mansion tonight, Logan." She looked off at the table, too, her eyes infinitely sad. Maybe I'd misjudged her. Whatever she'd felt for Jean, she genuinely liked Summers; she could grieve for him. "They're all upstairs, in the den and the kitchen, mostly, or out on the basketball court. We been waiting."

I focused my attention on her instead of the table. "What'd Xavier say about what happened?"

"That a mission'd gone wrong, and you, Cyclops and Dr. Grey were missing. He told us that right after, and he's been looking for you ever since. There's hardly been class at all, or much else. It's been weird, like living in limbo. God, Logan, I was so scared - we all were - but at the same time, it was - I don't know - _abstract_. We didn't have a clue what'd happened to you. Didn't know if you were alive or dead or what. I didn't let myself cry, because if I cried, it meant you were gone. It would've took me apart, so I just didn't let myself cry. Y'know?"

I nodded. I knew exactly what she meant. Exactly.

"Tonight, about midnight, the professor called me - you know, like in my head. He woke me up to say you'd been found, told me I could come down to meet you. I got Jubes and Kitty up, and Jubes called both the Johns, Bobby and Kurt. Bobby got up everybody else. Kurt went down to the chapel, to pray." She glanced at the floor. "The professor didn't tell me about Dr. Grey. He didn't tell me until you were on the way back in the jet."

Given McCoy and Storm's reaction, maybe he hadn't known, though surely he'd suspected, and I glanced back at him. McCoy was working over Summers while Xavier watched, one hand resting on Summers' greasy hair. Xavier wasn't going anywhere for a while, and the kids needed to know. But I needed to be here. Where in hell was Storm? Still with the jet? "Kid, I hate to stick you with this, but can you tell the rest? Or you want me to come do it?"

"No, Logan." Her voice was soft. "I can do it. What do I tell them?"

I stared hard at the back of the professor's head. I had no idea what he wanted them to know, but it looked like it was up to me to make that decision. I was a firm believer in honesty. I might not tell Marie everything that had happened, but I wasn't going to hide the essential truth, either. "It was a set-up - the mission a couple weeks ago. They were waiting for us down in the subway. They ambushed us. We were prepared for a few renegade mutants, not government firepower. Jean was killed in the initial fight; it happened fast. Scott and I were captured and held prisoner for eleven or twelve days. They were testing the limits of our powers, seeing what it took to neutralize us. We finally got a chance to break out - left a lot of dead guards along the way."

I looked back at her. Her chocolate eyes were wide. "This is what happens in combat, kid. Jean's gone, and take a good long look at Cyclops. I'd look the same if I didn't have this healing factor. You tell them that, as well. You tell them that if they want to join the X-Men, let them think about the last two weeks. This ain't no video game, eh?"

Flushing and frowning at the ground, she nodded. "I'll tell them, Logan. I'll bring you some clothes, too." Then she raised up on tip-toe to kiss my cheek through her scarf, and ducked out.

When she was gone, I surveyed the room, recalling the first time I'd seen it, peeping out of slitted eyelids, flat on my back and the scent of a woman strong in my nostrils. That scent still pervaded the place despite disinfectant and McCoy's beast-smell and Summers' blood and almost two weeks of absence. Jean. With time, it would fade completely. How bereft we were, missing one. My borrowed boots echoed as I approached the exam table where McCoy worked over Summers as the professor looked on.

He'd gotten the kid undressed now, stripping him all the way down to filthy underwear. Summers looked terrible. And I didn't need to explain a damn thing. The cotton briefs were caked with old blood in strategic places while fresh had darkened it further. McCoy's fierce face was even fiercer and the professor - I couldn't begin to describe the jigsaw puzzle of emotion there. Hank saw with the knowledge of how to heal the damage. The professor saw only what he'd sent the kid in to suffer. "What do you know about this?" McCoy snapped at me as he got the briefs off. "When did it happen? How long ago?"

"Our guards' idea of afternoon entertainment. They'd strap him down to the bed with cuffs." I helped Hank turn him over. "Then each took a turn, one right after the other. The last time was two days ago."

Stupefaction on McCoy's face. "You mean this occurred more than _once_? I shall have to test him for everything from Hepatitis to AIDS." And with a gentleness one would never have expected from those big, clawed fingers, he examined the abused area. I'd seen it before, but the professor had turned away, his face pale and shocky.

"Charles, get out of here," Hank said, brusque but kind.

"I cannot. You know, I cannot."

"You're in my way, Professor. And excuse my bluntness, but you cannot, physically, assist. I need Logan for his strength. If you do not wish to leave, please move back from the bed. Logan, how is your hip?"

"I'll live."

"I would prefer better than that." While he talked, Hank had begun making his way around the room, assembling a variety of testing equipment, including a long snake-like thing with a clear tip and a tray of implements that looked sharper than I wanted to think about. "First," McCoy said, "I wish to remove the bullet from Logan's hip; that will take the least time. Then I must suture the wound in Scott's side and wrap it, sponge him down, put Silvadine on the burns inside his left arm. They're starting to infect. The damage to the rectal region has gone days already. Another hour won't make much difference."

So with Charles in his chair backed against a far bed - quiet in his horror - Hank got me onto a second table, freeing me from that goddamned, stained coverall, and gave me a local before he swiftly cut out the bullet and dropped the bloody slug into a tray. My wound was closing almost before he was done. The procedure had taken minutes, and in minutes more I was healed completely.

Not a scar to show for the past twelve days.

That's obscene.

Ororo arrived as I was redressing and had the good grace to blush when she caught me in the midst of pulling on the pants that Marie had dropped off a few minutes before. Then she gathered herself and approached. Hank, I noticed, had twitched up a cover over Summers' lower body. Mere concern for the kid's modesty, or was he protecting her from the full truth? Her eyes were red. She'd been crying. Hard. But she gave me a little smile, the kind one found on faces in hospital waiting rooms, the kind that bad cliches called 'brave,' and I called pain. She laid her hand on my arm to squeeze gently. "How are you?"

"A lot better without metal grinding my bone. Well, without foreign metal."

That same small smile again and, impulsively, I put an arm around her shoulders, hugging her quickly. "Ro, go up and help Marie talk to the kids. They're all still awake." I glanced at the professor, a statue by the far bed, his eyes distant. I wondered what he was thinking, _if_ he were thinking. Maybe he was rummaging around in Summers' unconscious head, though I doubted it. Telepath ethics. He seemed unhinged by everything that had happened and immediate decision-making had fallen to Hank and I. But then, Hank's medical knowledge gave him purpose and focus, kept him from helpless incapacitation. Nor did he suffer guilt. He hadn't been the one to send us to Baltimore.

"I'd tell you to take him with you" - I nodded towards the professor - "but I don't know if he'll leave. You can try."

"I will try," she agreed. But she wasn't looking at the professor, she was looking at Scott. McCoy had turned him back over so he was face up, to work on the wound in his side. The sheet covered him from the hips down, and Ro approached to run a palm over his forehead. The Storm Queen can be as hard to read as Cyclops, even though her whole face shows. I came to stand behind her. She threaded fingers through his greasy hair. "When I first arrived here," she said softly, "he was the one who met me. There weren't many of us, then. Scott and Frank, Warren. Hank and Jean, but they were older." She smiled faintly and McCoy paused in what he was doing to touch her shoulder, then went back to his sutures.

"Four guys and two girls, not counting the professor," Ororo went on. "The men were always leaving the toilet seat up. But the day I arrived, Scott and Frank were there with the professor to receive me. I'd been in jail, in Nairobi, and been on the street for years. I thought I was tough. He looked so much like 'the boy next door.' I was vicious to him. He wasn't vicious back. Instead, he smiled at me. He has a beautiful smile."

Was the Storm Queen in love with ol' One Eye? It had honestly never occurred to me before, mostly because it was hard to imagine Ororo passionate about anything. She's usually the picture of transcendent calm.

"I called the winds and the lightning that day, thinking to frighten him, or awe him. But he didn't run from me, nor fall down and worship me as a goddess. He just said, 'Cool.' I have never forgotten that he was not afraid."

"Considering the fact that he could flatten you with a mere blink, he had little reason," said Hank, trying to lighten the mood.

"But he can't any longer," she replied, quietly, hand still on his hair. "He can't any longer."

"His power'll come back," I told her. "They didn't damage his eyes."

About the only damn part of him they hadn't damaged.

She nodded and breathed in. I could almost see her center herself, turn away to face the professor, kneel down and take his hand, speak to him quietly. McCoy was puttering now, starting a sponge bath on Summers' torso, waiting for Ororo to leave. Finally she did. And she got Xavier to go with her. McCoy sighed out when they were gone. "Bless Ro. I really didn't want to do what comes next with Charles in the room."

"So, how long has Storm been in love with Cyclops?" I asked, and caught McCoy start.

Then he smiled. "There are many varieties of love, Logan. Theirs isn't of the sort you mean. They have a unique bond based on their prize of control. Ro does love Scott, but she was _in love_ with Francesco Placido. When he chose to return to Italy five years ago, Scott and Jean got Ro through it."

"Who's Francesco Placido? Relative of the cook, I guess?"

"Valeria's only son. She brought him here from Genoa when he was nearly out of his mind at sixteen. His power is precognition. He has glimpses of the future."

"So why in hell didn't he foresee_ this_?"

"I don't know, Logan. He is no longer here. He went back to Italy to do what he can for the rights of mutants in the European Community. Frank is - " Hank tilted his head as he worked at readying the equipment. "Talking to Frank is a bit like I would imagine it to be, talking to God. He has great compassion, but it's distant. He strikes as old, despite his youth, because he sees on a scale that is difficult for us to grasp - and all in possibility. Futures are multiple, not singular. And he does not, in fact, see everything."

McCoy had removed the cover from Summers' lower body then proceeded to bathe him, disinfecting all abrasions and putting ointment on the burns. Finally, I helped him turn the kid over again. The more I saw, the more amazed I was that Summers had managed to stay on his feet at all, much less fight. "Survival is a great motivator," Hank replied when I voiced as much. "And adrenaline is our body's natural drug, but he will be a long time recovering. From many things. You will need gloves and scrubs, Logan. You may fetch them in the cabinet over there." He pointed. "Please wash your hands and arms and face as thoroughly as possible."

I did as he'd instructed and came back. This was the hard part - examination of the rectal area, and I was grateful the kid was out. What Hank had to do to fix him up was as bad in its own way as what had been done to him to make him need the fixing in the first place. As I said, I'd already seen his wounds, but there's a difference between the dim light of a cell and the bright light of an infirmary. This was at once more ugly and more impersonal. "Severe tearing to the sphincter and rectal walls, bruising and muscle damage, repeated scabbing." Hank listed off a litany of physical ruin. "I shall need to irrigate the area; Logan, please hand me the saline bottle from that basin of hot water. Thank you." He fitted a syringe onto it and got to work.

Salty water turned grainy and brown as it carried away dried blood, but the worst scabbing McCoy had to remove with a scalpel - debriedment, he called it - which caused even more bleeding. He also used a half-and-half mixture of hydrogen peroxide and water. The whole area was bruised right up to the kid's balls. It was difficult to position him, out like he was, but better out than awake through this. When McCoy had cleaned the outer area, he inserted what he called an anal speculum - a six inch tube with an interior plug and a cord for an electrical outlet . It was _lighted_, for crissake! They spared no expense at the mansion. But McCoy had moved big lights over, too, so he could see better. They don't call it "the place the sun don't shine" for nothing. Lubricating the speculum, he inserted it and removed the center part, then inserted and removed it again. I wasn't sure what the point of that was. Couldn't he just leave it there? I winced every time he pushed it in, though I knew the kid couldn't feel it. McCoy was mumbling mostly to himself. "Hemorrhoids, varicose veins, more tearing. I should check his lower bowel, as well." He pulled over the black snake-thing I'd seen before.

"What _is_ that?"

"Flexible sigmoidoscope, what we use for a lower GI. It will tell me if there is damage to the colon, and also how impacted his bowel region is. Has he been able to defecate at all? I would assume not."

'Has he been able to defecate?' translated from medicalese into 'Could he shit?'' I watched McCoy lubricate and insert the sigmoidoscope. "No, he hasn't." I didn't elaborate. Summers had tried. Once. When I'd first gotten to his cell, he hadn't had anything in him to pass, from dehydration, but by the final few days, he'd had both some solid food and enough time for it to work its way through his system. Then he'd tried once, and once only. We'd usually turned away from each other while we took care of nature's business. But that time I'd heard his suppressed scream and jerked my head around to see, found him sweating from the pain, skin clammy with shock. He'd almost fallen from where he'd knelt over the damn pail. To hell with propriety. I'd gone over to hold him up and he'd looked at me from those flat-blue irises. "I can't. I just can't. Hurts." Then he'd closed the eyes. "Christ."

And now, seeing the tear which extended from his anus almost to the base of his balls, I understood why.

"We'll have to give him an enema," McCoy said as he pulled around the screen. Apparently the flexible whatchamacallit had a camera in the end. "Fortune smiles," McCoy rumbled as he studied the monitor screen. I couldn't make out much of what I saw except pink tissue, red blood, and darker masses. It didn't look like fortune to me, but McCoy said, "Impacted bowels, yes. But no damage to the lower GI area. It's confined to the rectal region, which means no internal surgery." Getting up, he removed the damn snake thing and cleaned it off with gauze, almost idly.

"This next part will not be pleasant, Logan."

"And what came before was?" I asked, incredulous. "Let's get on with it, Hank." For some reason, I needed to see this through, needed to be present and conscious for Scott's sake.

McCoy nodded while he double-gloved. Seeing my expression, he said, "I want no chance that my claws may scratch him."

Then he proceeded to cut away the hemorrhoids and cauterize the region. "I'll put an antibiotic ointment on the interior wall. Suturing there would be inadvisable," he said. "But the external tear - that I will have to sew. It's too deep. When I'm done, we're going to have to give him that enema . I apologize for involving you, Logan. It will be a godawful mess, but there is no way around it. I will not subject Scott to this while he is awake - not right now, not after what they did to him. _Animals._" For a moment, all the fury he'd been covering over with his professional demeanor escaped. "Or no, that isn't fair. Animals do not engage in such behavior. I think I prefer to be a 'beast' to a man, when I see things like this. In any case, we must get this out; there is more up there than fecal matter. This is the side of medicine they don't show you on episodes of _ER_. It tends to messy instead of flashy. Onscreen blood is one thing. Onscreen shit is quite another."

I laughed. I couldn't help it. Gallows humor. Sometimes it's all that saves us.

Hank got him sewn up and then rolled him onto his left side, right leg up while I fetched a whole stack of towels; we arranged some of the towels under him, then inserted the enema tube and hung the bag up high, like an IV, releasking the clamp. Gravity did the work, filling the colon with fluid: warmed water and antibacterial soap. When the bag level stopped going down, McCoy got hold of the tube and muttered, "Here comes the fun part." Pulling the tube out - very gently - the fluid followed . . . along with shit, blood, and pus. It was ghastly. We collected the towels and shoved them in one of those plastic bio-hazard bags, then repeated the process. Three times. It took three times before the fluid was empty and only a little pink still from current bleeding. "We'll keep him on a diet of clear liquids for a week," McCoy said. "He may not have much strength, but the tissue needs to heal before we can give him solids again."

After that, antibiotic ointment was applied to the whole region, interior and exterior, and we dressed him in a hospital gown. "You know, Logan, if you ever tire of your current occupation, I believe you could have a future in nursing."

I stared at the back of the blue guy's head, not at all sure what I thought of that. "Thanks. I think."

"Don't mention it. In any case, you are free to go."

The dismissal, even though he hadn't meant it that way, annoyed the hell out of me. "And where the fuck do you think I'm going?" He glanced around. Overhead lights flashed off his little wire spectacles. Those damn things really did look ridiculous on the Cookie Monster. I gestured to Summers. "I need to be here when the kid wakes up. And I think it'd be a real good idea if nobody else was. We just put his body through hell, and I'll need to talk him down."

McCoy turned his head back and began setting up another array of equipment. He didn't seem upset. "I fear that you are probably correct. There was a reason I sedated him, but it will be several hours until he wakes. I made sure of that. While it may seem callous, I have a number of tests that I should run on his eyes while I have the opportunity. I have never been able to examine Scott while his power was 'off.' What I learn could be invaluable."

"And it keeps you busy, too, doesn't it?" I asked.

He glanced around again, giving a small smile that wasn't the least humorous. "I find it a more effective manner of catharsis than ripping out my bedroom walls, yes." He lifted Summers onto the gurney for the CAT machine. "Logan, he really will not wake for several hours, and I do not need your assistance for the next examinations. I advise rest - doctor's orders. Or go debrief Charles, at the very least. And eat something. Food makes up for sleep. I shall call you when he begins to show signs of consciousness."

I paused a moment by the gurney and looked down at the kid's face, brushed a lock of hair off his forehead. "I'll be back," I told him, though I knew he didn't hear it.

Then I went upstairs.

Kids clogged the den and solar and hallways, clumped together in small bunches, speaking in hushed tones. Some cried quietly. They all stared when they saw me, dressed in my own clothes and looking hale. For the first time, I truly cursed my healing factor. I wanted them to know what it could cost to be an X-Man. Jeannie was dead, Summers looked like he'd gone ten rounds with a grizzly, and I didn't have a scratch on me, just dirty hair and a beard that was overgrown even by my standards.

Thinking of the beard reminded me of what I'd come upstairs to do and I headed for the room Scott had shared with Jeannie. The few kids in the hall melted away when they saw the look on my face.

The room was locked, of course. Sense would have had me wait, would have sent me to get keys from Ororo, or someone. But fuck sense. I was tired of waiting and fresh out of calm. If I went to Ororo, she might claim the right to do this. But it wasn't hers. Scott and I had spent twelve days in POW hell together, and shot our way out side by side. This was mine. Releasing a single claw, I slipped it between door and jamb and cut the lock, yanking the door open.

It smelled musty, the way closed-off rooms get. It also smelled of Jean, like the lab had. Some of Summers, but mostly Jean. I flicked on a light. The bed hadn't been made, and Summers' closet door was half open. I could see that his shirts were organized according to shade. He must have to do it that way, to know what color he was wearing. One wall held three bookshelves, stuffed to overflowing. There was a desk with a laptop left up, a nice stereo, and as many CDs as there were books. A bass guitar stood in a stand nearby, an amp behind it, and more guitar cases behind that - five, that I counted. He must collect instruments. Techno-geek.

On the bed, right in the middle of blue sheets, lay their travel bags. So, the Land Rover had been recovered, at least. His was black, hers was hunter green. I grabbed his and headed for the bathroom.

The counter was a mess. They must have left in a hurry. Lots of feminine stuff - makeup, hot curlers, abandoned earrings, a jar of perfume. There was a spare case for contacts and saline solution. Obviously not Summers'. This room smelled strongly of Jean, too, and I felt her all around me, like a physical presence, like the touch of her cream skin. On the counter, long, thin snakes of her auburn hair curled in figure eights and spirals. Hand shaking, I touched one with my fingers.

_Jeannie, I am so fucking glad you didn't have to witness what I just did._

I picked up the hair and wrapped it around my forefinger, tied it there like a talisman. Then I picked up a few more strands and deposited these in a small blue porcelain pill box that she used for rings. I dumped the rings out on formica and put the hair in there. He might want it, later.

I wasn't sure what the hell I'd come in there for, really. Opening the bag, I checked its contents. He already had a toothbrush and razor in there, Right Guard Deodorant Sports Gel, a travel-size bottle of shampoo - Aussie something-or-another. Expensive stuff. Then again, he had the hair to be vain of, not stiff and coarse like my own. He'd packed clothes in the bag, too, and some book called _Neuromancer_. The edges were well-curled; he'd clearly read it before. SF junkie. But I didn't see anything obviously missing that he might need, so I shut off the bathroom light and went back out. On the desk sat a spare pair of his glasses. I grabbed those, just in case, and dropped them in the bag, then turned to find Marie standing in the doorway.

"Piotr said he saw you come this way."

I held up the bag. "I thought he might want some stuff to clean up with. I'm going to take a quick shower, then go talk to the professor. Then I'm going back to the infirmary. How're the other kids?"

"Shook. Ms. Munroe came up, a little after me. She talked to us some, told us more of what happened. She's still with 'em. The professor - We saw him, but he went to his office, then down to the Situation Room."

While she talked, I'd been staring at the carpet by the bed. One of Jean's bras peaked out from under the trailing edge of the spread - beige. She must have dropped it and forgotten about it. Or he had, getting it off of her, but I didn't smell sex in the room - not recent sex.

Marie had moved back from the doorway. "I guess I'd better let you get to your room."

"Yeah." I moved out past her, dropping a kiss on her crown and pulling the door to. I couldn't lock it, but I seriously doubted any of the kids would invade among the ghosts.

My "quick" shower wound up taking half an hour under hot water. I just stood there. It seems absurd, to think that water could wash away memory, but the combination of steam and pounding heat did something. I found myself crying under the spray. I couldn't cry in front of anyone else, but I stood in the shower stall and let the water come down on my head and just bawled. Only idiots think tears are for women. I'd seen men six-foot-two and two-hundred pounds cry like babies with the body of a friend in their arms. Grief is human, and irrespective of gender. I hadn't wept before because I hadn't had the luxury. I took it now, though I didn't really have it. Too many things to do, things Summers couldn't take care of in his current state.

I got out of the shower, put on fresh clothes, and went to talk to Xavier in the Situation Room.

* * *

><p>"The FBI . . ." Ororo muttered, rubbing at the bridge of her pretty nose.<p>

Xavier had been waiting for me, as if he'd known I'd come. He probably had. Offering me a chair at the big central table, and some tea, he'd summoned Ororo. It had been nearly dawn outside, the kids slowly drifting off to bed. He'd looked every bit of his sixty-something years in the room's artificial light. When Ororo had arrived, I'd told them both the whole story, from the ambush in the subway tunnels right up to the moment we'd heard the Blackbird. I skimmed some things about Summers' rampage - wisely, I think. Even what I did tell disturbed them both deeply.

Through it all, the black jacket that McCoy had cut off of Summers lay in the middle of the table, white FBI letters staring up like an accusation of adultery while CNN blared on a television in the background. Some perky blonde showing too much cleavage was blathering on about the explosion _"in a government facility located in the Maryland countryside."_ They made it sound like a repetition of the Oklahoma City bombing, not the destruction of a secret, high-tech underground bunker. _ "It appears to have been an act perpetrated by unnamed terrorists . . ."_ Nice, blasé explanation prepackaged for media consumption in these post-9/11 paranoid times. _"One hundred twenty-seven dead,"_ however, got my attention. Shit. This wasn't something they'd be able to sweep under a rug. Somebody was going to have to pay. At least they weren't, yet, pointing a finger at mutants.

The professor and Ororo both seemed at a loss. "They knew a hell of a lot about us," I said. "Our powers, our names - How'd they know all that?"

Xavier had leaned his elbows on the table, face in his hands. "I told them."

_"What?"_

My claws erupted and I might have leapt the table-top to run him through, but Storm lunged out of her seat to fling herself on my arms like the claws weren't even there. "Stop, Logan!"

"Get out of my way, weather witch." I was shaking with my fury.

"No!" I could see her fear of me, smell it, but she held her place. "Listen to him. Just listen."

I relaxed back into the chair. "All right. Talk, old man." But my own anger had darkened the edges of my vision and the claws stayed out. "Talk fast."

"Do you think this school, or the X-Men, could exist without at least the tacit approval of the government, Logan? You knew that I had contacts in the FBI and the police."

"That's not names and powers, Q-ball. They knew _exactly_ how to hurt us."

Xavier took a deep breath and stared blindly at the television screen. "Yes, within limits. There are some things they do _not_ know, or they wouldn't have needed to perform experiments at all. I don't understand what has occurred. And more, I don't understand _why_ it has occurred. It makes little sense. I shall need to speak with my contacts. But the arrangement that I made, years ago now, was FBI tolerance for our assistance. My X-Men have performed favors for the FBI in the past while the bureau, in turn, refrains from asking too many questions when we drop renegade mutants in their laps."

I let my claws retract. "Like at the Statue of Liberty. I thought talk of that had died down a little too easily afterwards."

"Yes, precisely. Since we left the offenders for them to arrest, the FBI did not look very hard for the ones who had left them. Our existence is known to a few who matter. Police reports were re-written and the others 'deep-sixed.'"

I leaned back in my chair and glared across the desk. "Sleeping with the enemy?"

"They are not our enemy, Logan."

"_Were _not - past tense here. They seem to have changed sides on you, Chuck."

He shook his head, emphatic in his denial. "I cannot believe that of my contact. Walter Skinner is not that kind of man. Something else must have occurred." He eyed me. "Would you permit me to scan your thoughts, Logan? I may see something of significance that, at the time, meant little to you."

"I figured you'd have asked that a long time ago."

"It is not always productive. The mind sorts itself in ways that are not strictly linear. It's usually best to allow others to tell their own stories. Nonetheless, the very telling involves a certain amount of interpretation."

I shrugged. "Have at it, Chuck." And I rose to take a new seat by his wheelchair, swing it to face him. His hands came up to either side of my temples and I experienced a powerful flashback. The last person who'd last done this had been Jean.

To have a telepath access your thoughts almost tickles, if there's such a thing as a non-corporeal tickle. Xavier was at once gentler and more powerful. I don't know exactly how long it took. Several minutes. I could hear the news report starting to repeat for the twentieth time in the background; the media made hay with incidents like this. Some idiot analyst was spinning out theories on who the 'terrorists' might have been. Two men fighting to get out of cages and we'd suddenly become a team of "at least" a dozen terrorists. Probably just as well. If they realized two guys had done that much damage between them, it wouldn't be possible to keep 'mutant' out of the conversation.

Finally the professor withdrew from my mind, shaking his head. "Aside from the evidence of the jacket, and the news reports, I would not even be certain that the FBI was involved. In any case, and until we can learn how the government will react to this, I want you and Scott to remain in the lower levels. They can be sealed, and are not easily detectable from the outside."

"You think they might come looking for us?"

"I do not know, Logan. It will depend on how the directors of the FBI choose to spin this one, but there was too much destruction done for it to be ignored." He indicated the newscast running behind him. It was the same thing that I'd thought myself.

"They know who they had - who you are and, unfortunately, where we live," he continued. "They will have to weigh the relative danger of what arresting you might expose, versus what they can feasiblely cover up. In fact, I have taken the precaution of asking Hank to take pictures of the damage done to Scott, should that evidence be required. Your clothing was also retained in evidence bags, though they probably would not admit it as such, given who collected it. We would have a difficult time pressing our case: photos and medical evidence can be faked. Even the jacket is not damning." He gestured to it, still on the table. "But I doubt that they will follow that track. They know I have access to excellent legal counsel, and even if they did win their case in court, we could do severe damage with publicity. Despite 'homeland security,' and the current fervor against our kind, this is a cynical country when it comes to the government. I do not think it would go over well, that the FBI had been holding prisoners and torturing mutants, especially mutants who had been on _their_ side." A strange look passed over his face. "Were it not for our larger goal and the danger to you and Scott should we lose, I might take great pleasure in dragging this through the courts. Xavier versus the Federal Bureau of Investigations - a David and Goliath story." A breath of pause. "They killed Jean."

Even Xavier had a breaking point. Funny, how one auburn-haired woman had been that point for three men.

Before anything more could be said, however, the phone on a side table rang on the interoffice line. The lab - I could tell from the blinking light. Ororo hit the speaker switch. "Yes, Hank?"

_"Please tell Logan that Scott is waking up. And as he previously suggested, I believe it would be advantageous, were he present."_

That odd jigsaw puzzle of emotion reassembled itself on the professor's features: relief, anxiety, grief, guilt. "We shall be right there."

_"No, Charles. Logan said that he wanted to do this alone. And under the circumstances, I think that his instincts are correct. We should absent ourselves until Scott is ready to see us."_

I didn't see what expression took the professor's face at that. In fact, I heard the last of Hank's words as I was out the doorway.

* * *

><p><strong>Afternote:<strong> Going back to the graphicness of the medical scene - why do it that way when I was intentionally vague on the rapes themselves? I was vague on the rapes because I don't believe in titillation by violence. But I think it important to tell what happens to people. If we saw more consequences, maybe our violence would lessen. I really, really could _not_ have done this chapter without Crys' pragmatic medical knowledge. _Grazie_, lady.


	5. 4: Scott

Sleep is sanctuary.

In sleep, I have dreams, and in dreams, I have Jean. She touches me: strong fingers across the muscles of my belly, thumb running up my sternum, along my collarbone, my jaw, then she grips my bare shoulders as she moves above me, and I, inside her. She speaks to me with her voice and with her mind and with her body. She enfolds me.

Waking is the nightmare. Cliched perhaps, but true. I have become fond of that in-between time when I am no longer asleep, but not yet awake - a bridge of sighs where I can grasp the tendrils of my dreams, wrap myself in them like her hair falling in a curtain around my face as we make love. It hides our laughter; it hides our kisses. The time inside that curtain - such a tiny percentage of my life - has come to define my whole world. Out of focus, and outside time.

So on that bridge between waking and sleep, there is no pain. Until I become aware of the now. Until I feel the empty place inside my head.

Until I _remember_.

* * *

><p>I woke in a bed, and for just an instant, I panicked. But it wasn't <em>that<em> bed. And I wasn't face down.

I will never be able to sleep on my stomach again.

I heard beeping from an IV monitor, cracked my eyelids a little. White ceiling. I didn't have all the colors that I'd once known as a boy, but I had more without the glasses. I saw grays and whites instead of pinks, and shades of dun, too. Blue was gray, yellow was almost white, green was brown-gray. Red, as always, was red. The strangest part was how well I could see in the dark without rose quartz to blind me. Hank had been right, all those years ago. I did have the vision of a cat, and I wondered (idly) if my pupils were slit? Since I hadn't seen my own eyes since my mutation had manifested, I wouldn't know.

Stupid thing to wonder, but just now my brain didn't seem to want to function quite right. That should have worried me, but it didn't. I couldn't gather enough coherent thought to worry.

I knew where I was, however: one of the little rooms off the main lab where Jean had set up real hospital beds. Exam beds weren't suitable for long-term patients, especially those not comatose. Might roll off and break an arm, which didn't look good on the insurance claim.

She always did tell me that I had a sick sense of humor.

Stretching fingers, I gripped the sheets. Clean. They were clean. So was I. Cleaner, anyway. Physically, I felt very light, and light-headed, too. Drugs. A lot of drugs.

I heard another body shift when I moved my hand. I wasn't alone.

Fuck. Couldn't they leave me _alone_? My head was empty now, only myself in there. I was all the company I needed.

"Hey, kid."

Logan. At least it was only Logan. I still didn't much like the son of a bitch, but we'd gone way past anything so simple as like or dislike. I didn't much like my own brother, either, but I'd die for Alex. He's my brother.

"You want some water?" Logan's voice again. "Hank said you'd be thirsty."

I nodded and he moved into my field of vision. He'd shaved and cleaned himself up. He looked normal. Holding a water bottle, he angled the straw into my mouth and I drank. It tasted flat, a bit metallic, but it got rid of the cotton stuffing my throat. "He said you should take as much as you can. He's pumping you full of IV fluids, too. I didn't follow all the reasons why. He said something about raising your potassium. Hell, I didn't know the body _had_ potassium."

"Potassium, dextrose, electrolytes. I lost a lot of blood." Live with a doctor, you learn a few things.

"He's trying to avoid giving you a transfusion," Logan went on. "Said you got a rare blood type. Figures you'd be ornery that way, eh?."

"The universal doner, but not the universal recipient," I whispered, pushing away the straw. I couldn't drink any more; too much effort. "Negative Rh, too. Jean had some of my blood stored, if he needs it. Everyone always wants my blood. The Red Cross loves me. They call if I forget to go donate. I guess even mutant blood works in an emergency."

He glared at me with those eyes. They say as much as his words ever do. I notice people's eyes. I always did, even before my own were hidden behind red.

"You'd be surprised," I told him, half laughing for no good reason. It wasn't funny. "People seem to think they can _catch it_ from me. Being a mutant."

"They can go to hell, then."

"Some would probably make that choice, if asked first."

He shook his head, pulling up a chair to sit down closer to the bed. I turned a little to see him as I took stock of my body. Or tried. The lightweight feeling made it difficult. I wasn't in pain. Or rather, I was, but I was also so high, I just didn't give a damn. "What am I on? Demerol?"

"Something like that." We stared at each other a moment, then he said, "I talked to the professor, told him who had us. And what we knew."

"Where is he? I'd have thought he'd be here."

"He wanted to come. So did Ro. Hell, I think half the school would be down here if Hank'd let 'em in. I'll call Xavier if you want to see him."

He started to get up but I shook my head, so hard it made me dizzy. "I don't want to see anyone! Including you."

It was cruel, but I just didn't care. I didn't want anyone there.

I expected some smart-ass remark, but he only studied my face a moment, then got up. "Okay. I'll leave you alone for a while. I'll be in the outer lab; call if you want me. I can hear you."

And he left. Just like that. Imagine. Logan doing something that I'd asked.

_Not fair, Scott._ He'd done a lot of things that I'd asked, and some that I hadn't asked, but had needed.

For long minutes, I just breathed, trying not to think much. Demerol made that easy. I considered going back to sleep, but didn't really want to. It was too hard to wake each time. If I could go back to sleep and stay there, I wouldn't hesitate.

I shifted a bit, to see if my body still worked right. Things hurt in an unspecified way. I found it more comfortable to lay on my side, but had to be careful of the IV in my hand, not catch it under me and yank it out. I'd always been such a good patient. Of course, it helped if the inspiration was getting your doctor to smile at you.

Dammit. Every thought. Everything. Everything came back to Jean. I tried to cry, but couldn't even do that. The drugs. They took away pain - _all_ kinds of pain. But right then, I wanted my pain. Strange, to want pain, but I did. The pain was what I had left and I clutched it to me, my phantom lover in her place. Everything my captors had done to me in that cell had, in a twisted way, helped. They'd made me hurt in my body as much as I hurt in my heart. How they'd done that - it had just given me another reason to kill them. Death and pain incarnate. I was the Rider on the Pale Horse. I'd brought their apocalypse.

I must have fallen asleep again, despite not wanting to. The second time I woke, I was still alone, still lying on my side. My head felt clearer now and I was more aware of my surroundings. The only light came from behind my bed - flourescent white shining up on the ceiling, casting long shadows. But such an empty room, lonely in the corners. Cold air on my arms, too; I pulled them under the thermal blanket and listened to the IV monitor, watched the lights blink upward in a repetitive pattern. Green, yellow, red; green, yellow, red. Hypnotic. I couldn't see the colors beyond red - always goddamn red - but knew that's what they were . My body ached worse, but I didn't want additional drugs. Drugs got in the way of my mind, and I_ needed_ my mind.

I was very weak, like a thrice wrung rag. All the strength I'd had to escape my prison was gone and I couldn't even imagine from where it had come. It was an effort just to raise my arm and look at it. Hank had bandaged the burns. I didn't want to see them anyway; they disgusted me, on many levels. I reached down to touch my side where I'd been shot. Christ, that had hurt. It was still sore, but bearable, and wrapped, too.

I wasn't sure if I wanted to focus on anything lower, where most of the pain centered. I'd survived by pretending my body ended at the waist, or that I didn't have a physical body at all. Instead, I'd constructed a body of anger, lived and breathed in that. But I had to face it; I wouldn't be a coward. Let my body be a puzzle to solve; I was good at that. Tactics. Strategy. Observe the box. Think outside the lines. Cut the Gordion Knot. _Fucking _analyze_, Summers._ Think, think, think. I could think myself out of feeling. Amputated at the neck.

I was torn bad, but I'd known that already. None of the muscles worked right down there any more. And the ache throbbed. 'A pain in the ass' took on whole new meaning. I could feel the scratch of stitches on swollen skin if I moved a leg. Stiff soreness. Moving released a faint odor of witch hazel from the gauze padding between my legs. I started to touch myself, but drew back the hand. I just didn't want to know. There was no pressure in my bowels, no need to take a shit. Apparently I'd been given an enema, cleaned out. God knows, I hadn't been able to pass in the usual way. Cyclops, Leader of the X-Men had been thoroughly - and literally - fucked up.

Next, I became aware of the catheter. I'd never had one of those. Weird sensation, but - and quite suddenly - I wanted it _OUT._ I was so overwhelmed by the desire to get it _out_ that I almost ripped it free with my own hands and would have, except for all those instincts little boys have drilled into them to take care with select parts of the anatomy. So I lay there and fought for control. I'm so good at control, even half-drugged. But it wasn't coming. _I was invaded._ Shame burns like bullets and stops thought, and for a moment, I couldn't even breathe. Then I started hyperventilating.

Logan heard me gasping. Damn his ears. He came in from where he must have been waiting right outside the door. Half lifting me in his arms, he wrapped me up close to his body. That, too, was shameful, but I'd gotten used to it. It was bearable because he never said anything. Or not much. Now, he said only, "Breathe, kid. In. Now out. In. Now out. In. Now out." A quiet litany. He was stroking my hair, like I was a child. "You'll be fine in a minute."

Eventually I was. But he continued to hold me . My own father had never held me like that.

_Chin up, Scott. Keep a stiff upper lip, Scott. Grin and bear it, Scott. Make me proud. Never let them see you sweat. Never let them see you hurt. Never bow your head. And never, _never_ let them see you cry._

Jean had seen me cry. Jean had gotten in under the shell and behind the glasses. I'd trusted her, handed her my heart and she'd taken care of it like it was something precious to her. Like I was something precious.

The professor had seen me cry, too - in relief - the first time I'd put on my glasses and hadn't been blind any more.

But they were almost the only ones, until this had happened, as if getting fucked had unmanned me. I'd blubbered on the plane all the way back from Maryland, and now here I was, crying in Logan's arms. He said nothing - no reproaches, no recriminations, no jokes, no insults - just held me, shifting me a little when my weight started to put his arm to sleep. When I finally ran out of tears, he said, "You want more water?"

"A little, yes."

I felt him reach for it, but kept my eyes shut. He put the straw to my mouth and I drank again, a few swallows, then pushed it away and he removed it. After a moment, I said, "Will you get this damn catheter out of me? I don't want anything in me."

"I'll get Hank - "

"I don't want Hank!"

"I don't know what I'm doing. I could hurt you."

"It's not complicated. It's a tube. You pull it out." My voice was starting to go high. I hated it when it did that, as if I were still some prepubescent boy.

"It's a little more complicated than that; I saw Hank put it in. I'll get him."

"_I don't want him touching me!_"

Why it was all right for Logan to do so and not Hank, I couldn't have said.

"Scott, I can't. I'm sorry. If you don't want Hank, we'll have to leave it in."

It was too much, to have to choose between two things I couldn't bear. I almost started screaming in frustration, but focused instead on struggling free. I didn't want held down. He was holding me down. I was going to lose it.

He released me, laid me on the sheets and knelt by the bed, a hand still on my arm. "Hey, kid, relax. Breathe. Close your eyes and breathe, okay? Close 'em." I did what he said. "Keep them shut. I'll be right back."

I heard him move off, out into the lab, and then heard them talking out there. I hadn't realized Hank was present, but I should have. He'd heard me say that I didn't want him touching me. But I just didn't care. They came in; I could tell by the weight of their footfall and a creaking as Logan knelt again by the bed. It rocked a bit from his grip on the rail. He laid a palm on my forehead. "Keep your eyes closed." I nodded a little. To Hank, he said, "Get the damn thing out. I don't care if he has to wet the bed to go. I'll change it. Just get it out of him before he climbs the goddamn walls."

I could recognize Hank by his musky smell and I squeezed my eyes tight. Logan had slid the palm of his hand down so that it covered my eyelids, like blindfolding a spooked horse. The top sheets were moved, and then I felt other hands on my penis. I flinched. Hard.

"Easy," Logan said. "It'll be over in a minute." He gave me his free hand to hold.

Hank is very gentle, and there's no fur on his palms. They feel like anyone else's, except larger. He spoke as he worked. "We must deflate the ball that is inside your bladder, Scott. That's what keeps a Foley catheter in place. And that is why it cannot just be yanked out. We take the water out with a syringe, like this. Slow and easy. And now, I'll slide the tube out. It'll feel a little strange, but it won't hurt. Don't jerk or try to pull away from me. Slow and easy, too, just like this. Slow and easy . . ."

It didn't hurt, but it felt damn weird, like pissing without pissing. I was clenching Logan's hand so hard, I could feel the metal in his bones.

"There. It's gone . I've put a plastic urinal by the bed, Scott. Use that if you need to go, and you'll probably feel like you need to frequently at first, even though your bladder is empty. It's a normal reaction. Please don't try to get out of bed. You're far too weak."

"Who else knows?" I asked; my eyes still shut behind Logan's hand. "Besides you two? Who else knows what they did to me?" Neither answered immediately and I could just picture them exchanging a glance. "Tell me, dammit!"

"Xavier," Logan said. "He was there when Hank cut the coveralls off you to get at the bullet wound."

"You were bleeding, Scott," Hank said quietly. "I had to see where all the blood was coming from. We fixed you up."

So. Charles knew that his favored field commander, his best little soldier, had been utterly vanquished. Once, Roman officers who'd lost a battle as badly as I had were sent a sword. The unspoken command was for them to fall on it.

Give me a sword and I'd comply, Professor. I'd failed. They'd taken me by surprise, like a fool. I lost Jean, then I lost control of myself, and I finally escaped only because Logan - the living weapon - had gotten me out. Let Logan lead the X-Men. He'd earned it. I wanted no part of it any more. I was done with black leather and red visors and saving a humanity who only wanted to kill me and mine for something we didn't choose.

"Who else knows?" I asked. "Ororo?" Another long silence that gave me my answer without words. "Fuck," I muttered. "You may as well tell the whole damn school!"

"No one else needs to know," said Hank. "And Ro certainly wouldn't tell them. You know that. But she was there when Logan debriefed the professor."

"_Thanks_, Logan."

"I didn't give her details, kid, and she didn't ask for them. It wasn't a gossip session. But if the shoe had been on the other foot, if it had been Ro, wouldn't you have wanted to know?"

Annoyed because he had a point, I pushed his hand away from my face and opened my eyes, glared at them both. I wanted to say, _It's different for me_. But how so? Did I assume that being male meant I had more pride? Jean would've kicked my ass for even thinking it. But I did think it. If a woman's raped in a situation like that, people don't blame her. They assume it. It's what happens to women in war.

And god, god - _Jean._ For the first time, it occurred to me that it might have been a good thing they hadn't taken Jean. Better me than her. Far better me.

But they hadn't raped _Logan_. Which just brought me back around to _why_. What kind of signals did I send out to people? Did they take me for a woman? Did they take me for weak?

Jean would've kicked my ass for that juxtaposition, too. But it didn't change the guilt I felt. I had no illusions that I could've stopped it physically. Not one man against four. But _why me?_ How had I brought it about? What had I done that had made them think to _rape_ me?

As if reading my mind, Logan said, "No one blames you, kid. No one."

"The professor blames himself," Hank added.

"He didn't lose the damn battle. And none of you got a dick up your ass. Multiple times."

There was an uncomfortable silence.

"Charles sent you in ill prepared," Hank said finally. "You didn't expect to face what you did. He trusted them, and we trusted him. All of us. We are all equally guilty, and equally innocent."

"I should have been more prepared!"

Hank shook his head. "You have always tried to shoulder too much responsibility, Cyclops."

"Don't call me that, dammit. _Never_ call me that again." I tried to sit up but Logan wouldn't let me, held me down. It didn't take much. "Cyclops was an _idiot_, in case you've forgotten. Odysseus duped him. I lived up to the name."

"Because you didn't expect grenade launchers and M-16s?" Logan asked. "We went in after renegade mutants, _Cyclops._ They don't have those kinds of weapons. Why on earth should you have been prepared for paratroopers?"

"Because I can't get complacent! I can't assume that I know what I'll face. If I do, people die. People did die. It was my error. I lost Jean. I _killed_ her. My stupid mistake killed her!"

The words broke me. It was the first time I'd said that aloud. I'd thought it plenty, but this was the first time I'd said it aloud. I was sobbing all over again.

"Kid, no - "

"Shut up, Logan! You weren't there! You don't know what happened!"

"So what did happen?" Logan asked. His voice was perfectly calm, not accusatory.

Six days we'd spent cooped up together yet we'd never talked about the initial confrontation that had landed us in our prison in the first place. I just hadn't been able to.

Now, I swallowed and bit the fleshy part of my hand until I quit crying. Then I said, "We were scanning the area as we moved up the tunnel; I had the left side, Jean had the right. We'd almost reached the three hundred feet that I'd said we should go to, but there was another, smaller access tunnel just beyond. It was cordoned off with plastic sheeting, dark behind, but Jean said she thought she saw movement, then closed her eyes to see if she could sense anything.

"I was looking right at the tunnel. I didn't look _up_. I should've kept scanning the whole damn time. But I assumed that I knew where the attack would come from. There was a grating above. They dropped down on us out of it - almost too close for me to shoot. I'd had the visor prepped for the distance to the tunnel access, and wasn't ready for a target that close. So I missed. They didn't."

My voice cracked on the last word.

"My mistake killed her," I whispered, because I couldn't get sound past the cold explosion in my chest. "They opened fire at less than a foot away and cut her in half."

Logan laid his hand on my head again. "It wasn't your finger on the trigger. Let blame fall on the right shoulders, kid. And they ain't yours. Jeannie didn't blame you."

"How would _you_ know?"

"Because she told me to get you out. To take care of you for her. Hell of a job I did."

Numbness spread in my belly like the fingers of an opening hand. "How did she _tell_ you that?"

"Logan - " Hank warned at the same time Logan replied: "In my head."

In his head.

So. There at the end, she'd spoken to _Logan_. Not to me.

I lifted myself up on my arms to pull away from him. I had to get away from him.

She'd spoken to _him_.

"Get out!"

"Scott - "

"_Get out!_"

"Calm down. It's not what you think, kid."

"Scott!" from Hank. "You're going to reopen your wounds."

"Good! I hope I do! And don't fucking tell me to fucking _calm down_! What was she doing in _your_ head, Logan? Why you? Why'd she talk to _you_?" I screamed the last and tried to slug him.

He just grabbed my wrist. "Whoa. Stop it! And she _tried_, kid. She tried to reach you, but you wouldn't listen. You were too frantic, trying to save her when she was past saving. She wasn't talking to me like you think. The last thing she said to me was about _you_."

"So it's all my fault? She talked to you because I wouldn't listen?"

Then the truth of that struck bottom. And I _remembered_. Remembered what I'd tried to forget. Jean in my head, screaming at me to go away. Screaming that she was as good as dead. I hadn't _wanted_ to hear. So I'd blocked her out. She'd been dying and I'd blocked her out to die alone.

Fuck.

Everything in me was breaking. My heart, my soul, my mind. I ripped free of Logan's grip and struck out because I couldn't take the pain inside. I hit the railing, Logan, the IV monitor, Hank . . . I think I was yelling, but I was too far past myself to be aware of what I was doing besides that insane need to hit and hurt and hurt _myself_.

I have no clear memory of what happened next. I know that Logan got me pinned and Hank sedated me, but I know that only because I was told later. I do remember falling down into black. And the dreams, when they came, were no longer good. Now I saw only Jean's ripped body, saw only her blood on my own hands. Red. It's the only color I still have.

* * *

><p>I don't know how long I was unconscious. A while. I woke drugged out of my mind once more, too fuzzy in the head to feel anger or panic or anything much. I needed to pee, as Hank had said I would, but was too out of it to try. Fortunately my bladder was empty, whatever it seemed, or I'd have made a mess of my sheets. I slid in and out of awareness, but finally surfaced enough to make out parts of a hushed conversation between Logan, the professor, and Hank. ". . . . should be . . . . at all times." Hank's voice.<p>

"You think . . . _suicidal_?" Logan.

"I think he is still in psychic shock." The professor. Even soft, his voice carries so well I could hear complete sentences. "In crisis, the mind shuts down so that we hear and remember only what the psyche is able to handle. With time, we become able to assemble the whole truth. That is happening now for Scott. He is back in a safe place, and so he is remembering. But even so, he may not recall precisely what occurred."

I dragged my eyes open. They were just outside my door. "I remember fine," I said, and had the satisfaction of seeing all three jump. "I remember exactly what happened. If there's one thing I can do, it's remember space and movement." The words were coming out slurred and slow. The last time I'd been this muddled, I'd split five pitchers of green beer with EJ on a bar tour on Saint Patrick's day. That had been funny. This wasn't. "I remember _everything_, Professor. Every fucking thing. And what I remember most is that I shut out my lover when she needed me. I shut her out when she was dying."

Saying that - _knowing_ that - should've hurt like hell, but I felt nothing. Which made me angry-not-angry. Drug-induced apathy killed both my anger and my hurt. All I had was the not-feeling. It was worse, in a way, than being handcuffed and bent over that damn bed, just another way of fucking with my head.

"Get me off the pain-killers, Hank," I said. "I feel like shit. I can't even talk right."

Hank came in to turn down the IV as the professor motored his chair right up to the edge of my bed. We looked each other in the eye for the first time - really and truly in the eye, with no red quartz between. He seemed old, and tired, the skin under his eyes bruised. I doubted he'd slept. A million things were written on his face, but guilt foremost among them. I didn't feel sorry for him though. I wanted to make him hurt as badly as I couldn't. "Are you _proud_ of me now, Professor? _I screwed up._ I got your protégé telepath killed."

"It was a mistake, Scott. And I don't blame you. I wish you'd quit blaming yourself."

I rolled away, put my back to him. "_I_ blame me. You should, too."

"Scott - "

"Go the fuck away."

"Son - "

"I'm _not_ your son! I was _never_ your son. Go away."

The wheelchair retreated. I listened to the sound of it fade away, feet behind it. I closed my eyes and returned to sleep.

* * *

><p>The next time I woke, I was alone. So. They were learning. But I could tell that they'd been working on me while I was out. The bandage around my middle had been changed at least once and it felt like they'd done something to my ass again - which made me feel . . . I don't know what. Shame was getting old, but it didn't go away just for wishing it. I didn't want <em>touched<em>. Not by Hank, not by anyone, not even to heal me. Why couldn't they just shut the door, turn out the light, and let me die? Why live when I hurt so much inside?

I wasn't angry any more. A combination of drugs, apathy, and exhaustion. It takes energy to be angry and I had none to sustain it. I lay quiet for a long while and breathed, listening to the sound of the air conditioning, the IV, and keeping my eyes shut hoping  
>I might go back to sleep. But I needed to take a leak too badly now. With the catheter gone - and they wisely hadn't put that back in - my bladder had to be emptied in the old fashioned way. The plastic urinal was still n on the bed stand, but that brought back bad memories of the pail in my cell. I refused to use it.<p>

I sat up. Very slowly. Just a few movements at a time. Roll onto my side. Legs over the edge of the bed. Lever up on both arms to balance on my hip. I couldn't put weight on my ass, hadn't for over a week and had gotten used to propping myself on one hip or the other. At least I no longer felt like I was about to tear in half. My arms shook, just holding up my body. But oddly, I felt a little better for being upright.

With great caution, I gripped the bed rail and dropped down onto my feet. I knew better than to trust my knees to hold me up. Luckily, these rooms were quite small. Unluckily, the bathroom was still a good four or five steps away, and nothing in between. I wasn't going to crawl; I wasn't an animal. I took deep breaths, waiting for the vertigo to pass. Then, hanging on to the IV pole, I walked. I'm not sure how, but I did. Five steps, until my hand could grip the jamb.

And then, of course, I promptly collapsed.

I made a lot of noise going down, too, since my legs went out from under me and knocked over a chair with a crash. It's amazing I didn't tear out the IV.

"_What on earth_ are you doing!"

I looked up. Ororo. Gaping at me from the main doorway. Naturally, they hadn't left me unguarded. "Your turn to watch the rabid dog?" I snarled, flipping myself over onto my back to conceal the open rear of that stupid hospital gown. Those things are dehumanizing. "I mauled everyone else, so they left you to muzzle me? Thought a woman's touch might do the trick?"

Ro has a splendid exasperated look, and is far less complacent than people think. She came in the door to get one arm under my back and lever me up, let me hang onto her. She's also stronger than people think. Stronger in a lot of ways. "You can be a real bastard sometimes, Scott. What were you trying to do? Reopen all your wounds?"

"Just go to the bathroom."

She pointed to the urinal by the bedside.

"No way. I'm not using that goddamn thing."

"You are the most stubborn man alive - worse than Logan, by far."

She knew _just_ where to kidney punch me, too. But she got me and my IV the rest of the way into the bathroom where I could lean into the sink.

And see my face in the mirror above.

I stared.

Ten years. I hadn't seen my own eyes for ten years. Or nine years and a few-odd months. It's impossible to explain what that's like.

"They're still blue."

How stupid . But it was the first thought out of my mouth. Actually, they were silver-grey to my sight now, but I knew what color they'd once been. Sky blue. I'd been vain of my eyes.

"Of course they are blue," Ro said. "Did you think they would change to brown? You may be full of shit sometimes, but I have never noticed that changing anyone else's eye color."

I grinned. Ro's sense of humor is as quirky, and as well-hidden, as my own. "I thought they might have turned red."

"Nothing so exciting. Just boring blue."

"Gee, thanks for the compliment."

Her lips tipped up slightly. "You are proud enough, peacock."

"Right. Get out of here. Let me go to the bathroom."

"I can't. You will fall over again."

"I'm not - "

"Shut _up_, Scott. And you have nothing that I have not seen before. Or did you forget a certain poker game eight years ago? I doubt that you have changed so much."

God - that game. We'd all been underage and as drunk as skunks, and Ororo had bested us at strip poker. "You _cheated_."

"Of course I did. I was the only girl and cheating was the only way to beat you and your ability to calculate probabilities. You did not know how to cheat, Frank was too honest to cheat, and Warren too pampered. I was none of those things. I was also not interested in giving three teenaged boys a free show." She gave me that upward tip of the lips again, then sobered and her dark eyes turned serious. "Scott, please. You need me to help support you, but credit me with some manners. I won't peek."

And she didn't. She helped me to the toilet, then stared at the wall while I took care of it. But I stopped at the sink again to wash my hands - and look in the mirror one more time before I went back to bed. Past the shock of the eyes was the shock of the rest of it - bruises on my left cheek and temple, my right forehead, the right side of my chin. I could see finger marks on my neck from where they'd held my face into the mattress while they'd fucked me. "I need to shave and shower. And brush my teeth."

"You may shave and shower later. As for your teeth, Logan brought your bag down. There is a toothbrush in it. If you promise me that you will not attempt to move, I shall fetch it."

"I promise."

She went out and came back in seconds with the bag, then fished out the toothbrush and toothpaste. I brushed my teeth. It's amazing how much difference such a small matter makes, and Ororo was probably the best thing for me just then; she was the one who'd bully me instead of pity me.

When I was done, she got me back to the bed, though I was so weak, I almost overbalanced us both. Just getting to the bathroom had taken all the energy I'd had, so I collapsed in a heap on the sheets. She had to lift my legs up and get the blanket over me, untangle the IV line. So much for modesty. I'd probably be embarrassed later, but just at the moment, I was too far gone to care. I fell asleep immediately.

When I woke for the fourth time, lying on my side, she was still there, sitting in the chair by the bed, head back against the wall, eyes closed. Maybe she was meditating, maybe just dozing. Her white hair spread out around her like a cloud. "Hey," I said.

Her chin came down. "Please do not tell me that you want a repeat of the bathroom adventure."

I smiled almost against my will. "No. How long has it been? I mean, how long since we got back to the mansion?"

"You don't know?"

"I've been on drugs, Ro. Still am. My head isn't entirely clear even now. I've lost all sense of time. Tell Hank to turn the drug drip off."

"It has been two days. And you need the drugs, Scott. You would be in severe pain, otherwise."

I rolled onto my back. "Better the pain."

"I do not think so."

"It's not your body. Tell him to turn the drugs off."

"I will tell him. If you wish to be stubborn and stupid, I suppose that is your business."

"You don't know."

"No, I do not know exactly what you are feeling. But I recognize sense, and you are not displaying any."

"Why should I? Who cares?"

She let out a deep sighing gust. "Self pity does not become you."

"Fuck off."

She didn't reply. I stared at the ceiling, trying to order my thoughts. I really needed to get control of my head.

Two days, plus the twelve or so we'd spent in our prison. Two weeks, all together. Two weeks since I'd touched Jean, since I'd spoken to her, since I'd felt her presence.

Our mental link hadn't meant that I'd known what she was thinking all the time. In fact, I rarely had. It had taken concentration on her part, either for her to read my mind or for her to project her thoughts into mine. I wouldn't have wanted her to know all my thoughts anyway. Sharing minds sounds romantic in theory, but in practice turns out embarrassing. We need our privacy. We imagine things we don't really want, or make passing observations that we'd rather not share with others. My link with Jean had been a matter of psychic _presence_, like holding her hand. In fact, after she'd put it between us, we'd stopped needing to touch so much. And after the link, she'd always been_ there_. I'd wake up, and that was my first awareness of a morning. Jean. She could be in the bed next to me, in the shower, down in the dining room, or even down in the lab. It didn't matter. She was _there_, in my head.

Now she wasn't. But I kept feeling as if she were, I kept reaching for her with that part of my mind. But it never connected. This must be what an amputee experienced, reaching with a non-existent arm. Ghost sensation.

"Did her parents bury her?" I asked now into the room's silence. Burial wasn't what Jean had wanted, but it's what her parents would have done, if I hadn't been there to enforce her wishes.

Ororo didn't answer immediately, then said, "The body hasn't been recovered, Scott."

Her words fell off of me, like water from oil. I couldn't speak.

"We looked," Ro went on after a minute. "We looked for all of you in fact. The professor with Cerebro, Hank and I on foot. The professor could not feel you, but because we could find no bodies, either, we held out hope that you were merely being held."

"Right on two accounts."

"I am sorry," she said, her voice soft. I turned finally to look at her. Real pain. Jean had been her friend, too, after a fashion, as the only two adult women here, though they weren't much alike otherwise. Ro was closer to me than to Jean by virtue of our age and shared experiences. Jean had never been a student with us in the same way.

"Do her parents know she's dead?" I asked.

"The professor talked to them, the morning after. He called and spoke to her father. They knew she was missing; they were prepared."

I turned back to stare at the ceiling. Gray, gray . . . gray ceiling, gray life without Jean Grey. "They must hate me."

"No. They do not."

I ignored her. "They never approved of me in the first place, wanted Warren Worthington the Third. Somebody else with money and membership in the country club."

She didn't reply to that.

"Do they have the memorial all planned?"

"Not yet."

"I'm surprised."

"They are waiting for you. They have been waiting for you to recover."

I laughed. It was painful from the bullet wound in my side, the stitches in my ass, and the hole in my heart. "They'll be waiting a long time then." Another lengthy silence. The sound of both of our breathing in the room. I wished I could go back to sleep but I was thoroughly awake now. "Tell me what else's happened. Did they put out APBs on Logan and me?"

"No. Though the professor has insisted that both of you stay in the lower levels, should it become necessary to hide you. But so far, there has been no attempt to locate you, no warrant for your arrest." A pause. "You did a great deal of damage, Scott. They are currently attributing it to terrorists. Exploding an entire building was not the smartest tactical decision that you have ever made. They cannot ignore it now."

"I don't care. As long as I blew them all to hell, I'm happy."

"One hundred and twenty-seven died in the initial blast. Another seven have died since, of burns. Thirty-one remain in critical condition. Is that what you truly wanted?"

She was trying to make me feel guilty. Trouble was, the numbers made me _happy_. "Yes, Ro. It's what I wanted. I'd make the count higher if I could. And if I find out who sold us out, I'll make it higher by at least one."

I heard her rise, move so that her face entered my field of vision. "That does not sound like the Scott Summers whom I know and respect."

I met her dark gaze. "The Scott Summers you know died two weeks ago. He just hasn't had the good grace to lie down yet."


	6. 5: Logan

Eight days had passed since we'd blown up a bunker and saved ourselves by killing - in the final count - one hundred thirty nine people. Then we'd walked this slow taper of days down into a frozen frenzy, all the mansion at alert like it was Defcon 2. I don't know what Xavier expected, or if he really thought we could hold off a siege from the US government, should it come. This was a school, not a military installation. The kids were scared shitless, and Marie had told me that the little ones cried at night, sleeping in the rooms of the older students.

But nothing had happened and anxiety had grown old and cold, lingering in the air like stale smoke in a bar. For five days, the news story had remained the same - unknown terrorists had blown up the bunker. Then on the fifth day, the terrorists acquired a name._ "A group calling itself the Mutant Rights Organization has laid claim to the bombings at the government facility in the Maryland countryside . . . "_ CNN blared it upstairs in the den, and down in the lab. We'd become some X-gene IRA. But no one publicly linked the 'MRO' to Xavier's Academy, no dark government rental cars or black vans followed winding roads to Salem Center. All that happened was a rise, around the country, in mutant-related hate crimes, while police looked the other way.

Xavier's face wore an expression of permanent haunting. Theoretically, he could stop it. He could turn us over, could make it known that there was no 'Mutant Rights Organization.' He could reveal that it had been merely two men, one with a gun and mutated precision-sight, the other with unnatural healing and bone-grafted knives in his fists. Two men had killed one hundred and thirty-nine government employees.

And that would calm things down? Who're we kidding?

I had a little cot in a room the size of a closet. It had been a closet, before Ororo had emptied it out for me. I tried not to dream - didn't succeed. I slept little. Sometimes when I did sleep, I woke to find that I'd put new holes in the steel wall. By contrast, Summers seemed to sleep all the time. Shock and depression. Body weakness, too, but largely depression. He slept to wipe out reality like a man might step off a ledge and plummet to his death.

I wondered sometimes if that's what he dreamt of. If that's what made him smile in his sleep.

I paced at night, and kept watch. He was never left alone, though we didn't invade his privacy unless Hank had a medical procedure to perform. But always, someone stood watch - me, often as not. Yet had he tried to take his own life, I wonder if I'd have stopped him?

It was on the third day that Summers had taken his only shower. We'd gotten his burned arm wrapped in plastic because McCoy hadn't wanted it to get wet, and then peeled him out of his bandages and let him clean up. The shower stall had hand rails and a ledge to sit on, but he hadn't been able to sit any better than he could stand. I'd had to get in there with him, hold him up and scrub him like a child. I hadn't minded but he had. He'd let me do it once because, like that first night for me, he'd needed to get clean of the smell. He'd probably have stayed under the water a long time if he'd been alone. As it was, he'd gotten out as soon as I was done. He hadn't shaved, hadn't had the strength. And he hasn't asked to shower since. His hair has gotten greasy all over again.

On the fifth day, McCoy had badgered him out of bed to walk around the lab. He no longer had his IV in, took his liquid lunch down his throat, not through a needle. When he ate at all. McCoy gave him chocolate Ensure. The stuff tastes like shit. I'd caught him once, dumping a can of it down the toilet. After that, I'd sat in the room until he finished each assigned ounce, ignoring it when he swore and flipped me off. I'm every bit as stubborn a bastard as he is.

But on that fifth day, McCoy had forced him up, making him walk supported by McCoy's arm, then by mine when he'd noticed I was there. I'm still the only one he lets touch him without argument. He'll put up with Ro, and suffer McCoy. But if I'm around, he just _looks_ at me with those eyes I've come to hate. Pale gun-metal blue. Sometimes flat and feeling-less, sometimes so full of pain, they make you want to hurt yourself. Watching him is like standing at the grave of a child.

We'd passed the door to Jean's office as we'd circled the lab; he'd hesitated, then gone on. Later, when I'd come out of the bathroom after taking a piss - two minutes at the toilet maybe, three tops - I'd found his room empty . Panicked, I'd called McCoy and the professor, then gone up and down the hall, looking in every nook and cranny until McCoy came barreling down to join me at the same time as I'd felt the brush of the professor's mind. _He is in Jean's office._

We'd burst in there. He'd looked up at us from where he stood by her desk, his fingers stroking the carved wooden nameplate. He'd made it himself -_ Dr. Jean E. Grey_ - the letters etched in wine-brown cherry by the power of the sun channeled out his eyes. He carves wood to remind himself that he's more than an organic weapon. He did the main banister pillar last summer. Young Piotr Rasputin - our resident artist - had drawn the pattern thin in white chalk, then Summers had cut it out. A dragon coiled about an X. It had taken a week, and was beautiful.

Now, he'd picked up the nameplate, fingers closing convulsively around it, his palm obscuring her surname as if he would claim her finally. _Dr. Jean E . . . _ "Get out," he'd said, very calmly.

There was nothing amiss; I'd taken stock as soon as I'd entered. He'd touched nothing beyond the nameplate and the pictures on her desk. She'd had two pictures, one of him, one of them both sitting on a bench together, her in his lap. He'd turned the pictures face down, but that was all.

"Get out," he'd repeated. "I'm not going _to do myself in._" It was said sarcastically. "If I'd really wanted to, I'd already be dead. You're not that good. Now leave me the fuck alone." So I'd grabbed McCoy's arm and hauled him, protesting, out the door.

Summers now slept at night in Jean's office, making the leather couch his bed. He spent most of his time in there, in fact. Sometimes, he locked the door on us. Sometimes he left it cracked and I would find him reading her mystery novels, the ones she'd had down here, though he'd never much cared for them before. John Le Carre and Tony Hillerman.

Today - day eight - he'd walked out of the office, a book in his hand: Donna Tartt's _The Secret History_. "'Does such a thing as 'the fatal flaw,' that shadowy dark crack running down the middle of a life, exist outside literature?'" He read from the book, right at the beginning. "'I used to think it didn't. Now I think it does. And I think that mine is this: a morbid longing for the picturesque at all costs.'"

He'd snapped the book shut. "What do you think mine is, Logan? Fatal stupidity?" His voice was tight, like he balanced on the edge of something. He suffered wild emotional swings these days: apathy into sudden anger, cynicism into sick humor.

I could've ignored him and probably should have, but couldn't resist replying, "No, your fatal flaw is your own sense of honor." I'd kept my eyes on the newspaper that I'd been reading. "You lived by it, built your world on it, until it broke you. Now you're trying to get it back."

Silence. He hadn't expected that. He'd expected me to be snide, or to coddle him. I'd heard the office door open, then snick shut.

And so time has passed. Eight days.

But it hasn't healed.

* * *

><p>"Logan? You busy?"<p>

I turned to find Marie with young Bobby Drake standing in my doorway. Drake held something in his hand: big, rolled-up piece of paper.

"What're you doing down here?" I grunted. The kids knew about the lower levels, and they all had the elevator codes these days in case of an emergency, but they weren't allowed to wander around down here like lost cattle.

Now, the pair of them sidled into my closet room which fit only a cot and the suitcase that Marie had packed for me. She settled down cross-legged on the bed like she owned the place, saying, "Miss Munroe told us where you were."

Drake remained standing in the doorway, looking nervous. I wasn't sure if he was nervous of being in a room this small with me or of nervous of whatever he held. I nodded to it. "What is that?"

"What we came to talk to you about," Marie said. "It's for Mr. Summers."

Drake unrolled it so I could see - a big piece of newssheet full of hand prints in different colors. God, didn't the kids realize Summers couldn't see colors? Signatures and notes had been penned beside each pair of hands. Every student had signed, it looked like. A personalized, homemade get-well card. "Why're you showing this to me?"

"Should we give it to him?" Marie asked.

I glanced at her. She was deadly serious. They both were.

"We don't want to upset Scott," Drake added. He tended to call Summers by his first name these days since he was no longer a student, and they'd known each other for years. Of the younger kids at school, Drake had been here longest, a big brother to the rest. He made it his personal duty to welcome all newcomers, as he'd once welcomed a girl called Rogue. "We just want him to know . . . " He trailed off, and shrugged. "We want him to know that we haven't forgotten he's down here."

I settled onto the bed beside Marie and rubbed a hand over my face, sighing. Last night, I'd stolen upstairs to watch football in the den on the couch with the kids. Not because I gave a shit about the Cowboys, but because they'd needed to see me. And maybe, just maybe, I'd needed to see them. Xavier hadn't said a thing about my breaking his orders to stay underground. If the FBI was going to arrest us, they'd already have tried to do so. I wondered if he'd gotten anything yet from his contact in the Bureau. He was supposed to meet with someone later this morning.

Now, I studied the newssheet that Drake held. Some of it made me laugh. "I can't believe the kids want him to come back and give them tests. I thought he gave the tests from hell?"

"He does. But you haven't seen Hank McCoy's," Drake said. "Of course, I haven't seen them either, but I've been told. Even Kitty's lost. I love Hank, but he's too smart to teach normal people."

Inclined to agree, I nodded. "Should we give Mr. Summers the poster?" Marie asked again before Drake could get distracted. "And will you take it to him for us?"

"Hell yes, you should give it to him. As for me taking it - you can take it yourselves. But wait here. I need to check out a few things first." Rising, I headed for the door, then paused with my hand on the jamb. "I may be a bit; make yourselves comfortable. And if he absolutely refuses - don't take it personal, okay?"

"We won't," Drake said.

I headed then for the lab, ran into Ororo in the hallway. "Did they find you?" she asked.

"Yeah. Did you know what they wanted?"

"Yes."

We just looked at each other a minute, then I said, "I'm going to let them in to see him."

She gave me that placid Storm smile. "I thought you might."

"That's why you sent them to me."

"Yes." And she went on her way.

Ororo likes to play with the lightning.

McCoy wasn't in the lab; it was Xavier's turn to do guard duty. He was working at a laptop and glanced up as I entered, nodding and returning to whatever he was doing. They were used to me prowling around, even when it wasn't my turn to play guard.

Now, I paused by the door to Jean's office, but didn't find Summers in there. He was, wonder of wonders, asleep in his hospital bed. I still wasn't sure how he could sleep given the pain he was in, but he did. He'd refused strong painkillers, wouldn't take anything more than regular Tylenol. Surprisingly, Xavier had come down on his side. "They interfere with his ability to process loss," Xavier had said. "Grief is a wound no less than any other, and unlike physical wounding, stopping the pain won't help. It simply delays his grief, and that complicates it. The passage of bereavement must be traveled, not avoided."

And _that_ was how Xavier had been dealing with it all. After that first terrible night, he'd put on his psychologist's hat and hadn't taken it off since. He seemed to have forgotten that he might want to apply a little of his head-shrink wisdom to himself.

Now, I walked over to pause by his chair. "Could I speak to you on the room's other side for a minute?" I asked softly. Since that one time Summers had overheard us, we'd stopped assuming that he was out when he seemed to be out.

The professor followed me in his chair across the lab. "Yes, Logan?"

"I got two kids in my room with something for Scott. I could bring it down myself, but I don't want to. I want them to do it."

He blinked at me, then sighed. "We should ask Scott first."

"I'm not going to ask him. I'm going to tell him. I won't spring them on him without warning, but I ain't gonna ask him. We both know what he'd say."

"Who are the students?"

"Marie and Drake. Drake's known Scott a long time, and Scott and Marie - " I shrugged. In the year and a half since Marie had arrived at the mansion, she'd developed a special affection for Summers, an affection that had annoyed me. But he'd been around when I hadn't. And like Marie, he had a power he couldn't control except by artificial means, a power as destructive as hers. I suppose it made sense if she looked up to him. I'd put up with it. Now, I thought it might be useful. "Marie saw him that first night anyway. And neither is likely to chatter."

Xavier nodded. "I agree. I won't stand in your way."

"But you won't come in, either."

He looked off at a rack of drugs, labeled in their glass bottles behind glass doors. "I have an appointment shortly. And you don't need me there in any case."

I decided to push it. Unlike the rest of them, I'm not scared of the professor. I respect him, but he doesn't awe me. "That ain't why, Chuck. You know he didn't mean it. What he said to you."

"I know, Logan. And yet, a part of him, in that moment, did mean it. He needs someone to blame, in order to quit blaming himself quite so much. I can be that for him."

"You're both so damned willing to hurt yourselves 'for the greater good,' aren't you? I can see where he learned it. It's stupid. If Jean were here, she'd tell you the same thing. Blame games are too fucking easy to play. They're also pointless."

He looked back at me again. His eyes are hazel, like mine. All colors and no color. "And you, Logan? Would you take your own advice? It might permit you to sleep at night."

Goddamn.

I stalked away. I hate telepaths. Especially jealous telepaths. Scott was talking to me, not him. And however much Xavier might 'understand' that, he was still human enough to resent it.

I wasn't quiet going into Summers' room and saw him flinch, almost imperceptibly. So. He was awake and pretending to sleep. "You might want to sit up and run a comb through your hair. You're going to have company."

He rolled onto his back and looked up at me; at least he didn't try to play opossum. "What are you talking about?"

"Marie and Bobby Drake got something for you. Sit up."

He did. A mix of panic and anger flashed over his bruised face. "Are they out there?"

"They're waiting." I didn't specify where.

"Logan, I'm a fucking mess. I don't want them in here! I haven't taken a shower in days - "

"So take one."

He blinked at me. If I'd been a superstitious man, I'd have crossed my fingers behind my back.

But it worked. For whatever reason, it worked. He got up. I didn't help him. He can't abide that. I let him do what he can for himself, then assist with the rest without asking his permission. Asking pisses him off and gets his back up. He needs less help these days, anyway. He gets to the bathroom on his own, and walks around the lab, even made it once or twice down the hall. His chief problem has less to do with strength than with interest. He can do a good deal more than he wants to do. After examining him this morning, Hank had said that it was probably time to put him back on solid foods - which had been a politic way of saying that Summers was healed enough to take a shit, and needed to build up his energy. He could sit down, too, as long as he did so carefully.

Right now, he'd gone into the bathroom to turn on the water, was pulling his sweatshirt over his head when I entered behind with a plastic bag to cover the burned arm. I wrapped it for him and took off his bandages. I knew how to do all that, didn't need McCoy any more. The bullet wound had stopped seeping days ago and was starting to close, though he'd have a dimple scar. The bruises on his face and body were fading, too; they'd gone to that ugly, mottled pea green. He looked underfed still, the bones of his face sharper, his ribs and pelvis and collarbones jutting out like exclamations. And while he had a surprisingly heavy beard along jaw and chin, and hairy legs with narrow calves, the hair on his chest was thin. He had long, elegant feet, too, but square hands with short nails. It was as if parts of him didn't quite match up. And he seemed taller than he actually was. When I came up next to him, it always surprised me a little to look _down_.

"I can do this myself," he said without glancing at me as he dropped blue pyjama bottoms.

"Fine. I'll be out here." I left unspoken, _in case you fall._ He just snapped the curtain shut in my face. I waited.

After about five minutes, he said, "Get out of the fucking bathroom, Logan." Since he hadn't fallen yet, I did as he asked. I didn't keep tabs with my watch, but he was in there a long time. I understood, didn't rush him. I was too freaking glad he was in there at all.

When he finally shut off the water, I had a towel ready, handing it to him without comment - assistance parading as courtesy. "You want to shave?" I asked.

"Was that a question or a suggestion?"

"Both. You don't have to take it all off. Square it like so." I drew a finger along my jaw to illustrate. "Wouldn't look too bad." It would also be easier for him to take care of.

He moved to check his reflection in the mirror. Then without further comment, he picked up his razor, turned on the water, and did as I'd suggested - shaved cheeks and neck but left the beard along his jaw and around his mouth. It made him look ten years older.

"Well?" he asked. I just nodded, and we got his bandages back on him, then some loose clothing and he crawled into the clean bed. I'd changed his sheets while he'd showered. "Christ," he said, "I feel almost human."

I could kiss those two kids. "I'll go fetch Drake and Marie."

They were still in my room, talking, and both looked up as I entered. "That was 'a little bit'?" Marie asked, perturbed.

"He needed to shower, but he's ready. Now, listen - he's going to look bad."

"No kidding. I saw him, remember?"

"Yeah, well, I didn't know what you'd expect. He's pretty wiped out yet. Don't comment on it. I won't let you stay long, either. No more'n about ten minutes. Now let's go. He's waiting." They filed out in front of me and we headed for the lab. I felt like a sergeant mustering troops for battle.

Summers had propped himself up with pillows and was reading, trying to look nonchalant, or at least in control. He even managed to smile. "Hey, guys." He offered Drake a hand and let Marie kiss his cheek through her scarf. She gets away with that. Southern belle charm.

"I like the beard," she said, grinning and running a gloved hand down it. "Very mysterious, sugar. Makes you look like Heathcliff."

She'd meant it as a compliment, a joke - but everything in the room froze, and it wasn't from Drake. Bad choice of metaphor. Very bad choice. Even _I_ knew enough to know that. Heathcliff had lost Catherine, and gone mad with grief.

"_Sorry_," she whispered, looking ready to cry. I wasn't sure what the hell to do, wasn't sure how Summers would react.

But he put an arm around her shoulders and pulled her against him, heedless of her skin. "It's okay. You don't have to avoid talking about Jean." He looked up to pin Drake, his eyes gone slightly red. It made the blue irises that much starker. His voice came raw. "I don't want that. I don't want her to disappear like her body did - for people to act like she never existed. I couldn't take it, you understand? I couldn't take that."

Drake shifted from foot to foot. "Okay." But it was said mostly to shut Scott up. He didn't know what to do with a Mr. Summers on the verge of tears.

Scott seemed to sense that, letting go of Marie to point to the rolled-up paper in Drake's hand. "What've you got?"

Drake handed it over. "The students made it for you." Marie helped him unroll it.

He smiled when he saw what it was. Really and truly smiled. And he read everything, seemed to find the comments about tests as amusing as I did. But he'd started to look a bit distant, too, as if he were phasing out or withdrawing. I was about to suggest that they let him be, when he asked, "Why on earth do they want me back? I'd think they'd be relieved to get rid of me."

Drake's face was shocked. "You're the best teacher this school has!" he blurted. "Even with that periodic torture you call tests." It wasn't a kiss-up. Drake didn't need to kiss up any more.

Clearly uncomfortable in his own turn now, Scott looked away. "The school's the professor's."

"And he's a fine teacher. I didn't say the others were bad; I said you're best. You make it real."

"Anybody can do that. You don't need me."

"But 'anybody' doesn't. You do. You dragged us all over the mansion, taught us how to repair a carburetor, rewire an electrical outlet, balance a checkbook, fill out a tax form, and fix a toilet. That's a lot more than just math. And you taught us how to _act right_, Scott. You taught me how to think about others first, and how to be brave."

Summers kept his face turned sideways, and had closed his eyes; I could only imagine what must be going through his head. What he'd seen done and what had been done to him - and what he'd done himself in revenge.

Drake was inexorable, like a glacier, his expression earnest with old pain. "You remember the Christmas I arrived? I was twelve years old. You and Hank kept me alive. You guys kept me from jumping off the goddamn roof. You remember that? I do. It was, what, fifteen degrees out? I didn't feel it, but you two did. Still, you both sat there in nothing but sweatshirts, talking to me about dying and living. I remember you telling me why you'd considered killing yourself, and how you'd planned to do it when it had seemed like all you had left was a choice between being blind or being dead. And then the professor had showed up and you'd had a third choice. It wasn't what you'd started with, but it was better than the other two. You talked me down off the roof that night because you were honest. You didn't promise me that life would go back to normal. But you said there were people around who cared if I lived or died, y'know?

"Well, now I'm telling you. There are people around who care what happens to you, Scott."

Jesus Fucking Christ. The kid had more chutzpah than the rest of us put together. I didn't ask Summers' permission; Ro didn't take Summers' crap. Drake just confronted him head on.

And got away with it. Excruciating emotion tore up Summers' face, but he said not a thing back. Reaching out, Drake pulled Marie up from the bed. "We should go and let Scott rest." They headed for the doorway.

"Bobby," Summers called.

"Yeah?" Drake didn't glance around, whether from fear of Summer's anger or concern for Summers' pride.

"Bring me my guitar."

Drake grinned then and did look about. "Which one?"

"The _guitar_, jackass. If I'd wanted a bass, I'd have said a bass."

Drake shot him the bird, but replied, "You got it, Boss-man."

I followed them out, led them to the elevator and went up with them. "I'm not sure," I said, conversationally, "if you're brave, or just plain crazy, Drake."

"Protected status," the boy explained, grinning. "I'm the kid brother. Scott can be a real bastard when he's hurting, but he only goes after people he thinks are his equals." Then the smile fell off his face. "What'd they do to him, Logan? I've never seen him look like that, like he didn't know if he wanted to live or die."

I didn't reply; the elevator doors had opened in any case. It was still light out, only about noon. This was the first time I'd seen the sun in weeks. I emerged into the hall that led to the solar like Rumpelstiltskin waking from an age of sleep. Marie went off to give her report on the visit to the other kids while Drake went to fetch Summers' guitar. I waited by the elevator until he came back with it. "He's probably asleep," I said reaching for it.

A bit reluctantly, Drake handed it over. Hard-shell case. Heavier than it looked. "The guys are kinda wondering if you're coming up to watch football with us tonight? It's Oakland versus Tampa Bay."

"That's a game? I thought it'd be a joke."

He grinned. "So you coming?"

I studied his face. Who'd left Drake in charge of morale? "Yeah, I'm coming. Tell Marie to save me a spot on the couch."

I went below then with the instrument, ran into McCoy in the hallway. He looked at the case, then at my face, a slow smile spreading on his lips. "I heard," was all he said.

"When did our students get to be wiser than us?" I asked him.

He shrugged with one shoulder. "Norman Douglas: 'If you want to see what children can do, you must stop giving them things.' We have not been able to give them much, in the past few weeks. Perhaps they are attempting to show us what they can do - that they are capable of taking care of each other. Even of taking care of us."

"They shouldn't have to be our parents, Hank."

"Nor have we asked them to be. But that isn't the same thing as occasionally permitting them to be strong. Part of being a teacher is knowing when to quit being a teacher."

He might have said more, but the elevators opened behind us and we both turned. Ro emerged, trailed by two men like a matched pair of chariot horses, the light and the dark - collar-length blond hair and great white wings trailing feathers on the hall floor, paired with black hair and the kindest, saddest eyes I'd ever seen. Ro clung to the hand of the man with the sad eyes.

"Stars and Garters!" McCoy grunted. "Warren and Frank! When did you two get here?"

The dark-haired one released Ro to step forward and embrace McCoy, kiss him quick on either cheek. He was tall, but skinnier than Summers. This was the one they should call 'Slim.' "_Ciao, ciao!_ Warren" - he gestured behind him - "came to fetch me."

"I was in Bangkok on business," the blond one - Warren - said, "when the professor called. I had to get away first. That's what took so long. I flew from Thailand straight to Rome, and met Frank. Then we came on here together."

So this was Warren Worthington III and Francesco Placido. Worthington, I knew about, had seen pictures of - minus the wings. It's hard to evade Worthington Enterprises in the States, like ducking the Microsoft Monster or Time-Warner. In press photos, the crown prince had always struck me as pampered, bored and cavalier. Now, he showed a different face. The arrogance remained, but muted behind a tired, frazzled, spent expression. His perfect hair was mussed, and he had bags under his eyes from lack of sleep. He noticed me immediately, the stranger in their midst, but didn't put back on his public mask. He didn't have to here, any more than he had to hide the wings (though how he could hide them at all puzzled me).

Placido I'd never heard of except in passing reference until McCoy had spoken of him the other night. I'd asked a few questions since. I was looking at the only alpha mutant on the planet under the age of thirty to be rated a ten. But his power wasn't combative. Francesco Placido walked through time like anyone else might stroll down a boardwalk. He had aristocratic features but nothing of arrogance in his face. Just those sad-intelligent eyes. And whatever his fine looks, I knew Placido to be the son of poor Genoan dock workers relocated from Southern Italy. Xavier's money had sent him to law school so he could eventually work in the Italian government, protecting the rights of mutants in Europe.

Ro started to make formal introductions when Placido jerked up his head to look off down the hall past the rest of us. "Scott," he breathed. "_Cosa gli è successo? Merda!_"

Worthington echoed a similar sentiment: "Holy _fuck_. What the hell happened to his _eyes_?"

Placido had shoved past us to reach Scott, envelope him in a full-body embrace while speaking turbo-speed Italian. Summers isn't the touchy-feely type. He'll touch, but more as if it's something he knows he ought to do, rather than as a matter of instinct. And he wears personal space like plate armor. Being physically engulfed would've rendered him a little uncomfortable no matter what, but under present circumstances, it was intolerable.

Ro and I were moving at once, while Summers, face stark, made no move at all, not to greet Placido nor to shove him away. He just stood stiff, eyes wide as if it took all his concentration not to fly apart. Placido felt Summers tense at the same time Ro reached him, and he stepped back of his own accord. Then he_ transfigured,_ without moving a muscle. It was all in the eyes, and I recalled McCoy's comment that talking to Frank was a bit like talking to God. I couldn't have said it better. His face became incarnate compassion, both present and distant at once, and he spoke in that lilting English. "You could not have avoided this thing, my friend." It was not a consolation, not a reassurance. It was a pronouncement.

"Shouldn't you be the last one talking to me about predestination? How many futures are there?"

"But the choices we make in our life are a part of our selfs. You believe. You trust. You _hope_. To do other - that would not be our Scott Summers. Past a point, there is only the one choice for you. The only way for this not to have happened, would have been for you not to have gone. And you couldn't not go, _sì_?"

The rest had drawn up around us, and Summers shot a glance at Worthington. If he hadn't had an audience, he might have been more open, but pride and anger were all the favored son retained. He drew them about himself like Joseph's fatal cloak of many colors. "Maybe who I was, was wrong," he said, and reaching out, took the handle of the guitar case from my fingers, turning away to head back to the lab as if he'd had enough of us.

Worthington watched him go with a glower, while Placido and Ororo exchanged a glance. She rolled her eyes; he smiled faintly, shook his head. A covert conversation conducted in small gestures. The Goddess and the God. Seeing these two together, the notion that Storm might be in love with Cyclops did seem ludicrous.

Before Scott could get back inside the lab, however, the professor's voice rang inside our heads. _All of you, please attend me in the Situation Room. Scott, too, if he feels strong enough._ And the touch was gone. We stared at each other a moment, then wordlessly followed Ororo and Placido down the hall. Almost automatically, the balance had shifted to place them at the center. Summers hesitated a moment, then set down his guitar and followed as well, bringing up the rear as if he hadn't entirely committed himself to participation.

We filed in to find Xavier seated at the oval table with its central holographic display, quiescent now. He appeared unusually troubled. "Please have a seat. And welcome home to Frank and Warren. I'm sorry I wasn't there to meet you when you arrived."

"Ororo was," Frank said, as if that settled it.

Yanking out a blue padded chair, I plopped down, and Summers came to sit beside me, his hands folded tightly on the top. The others took their own seats, Warren raising his wings over the back of his until they brushed the wall behind. I noticed that Placido, beside him, took care not to roll chair wheels over the tips, like watching for a cat's tale. Living with mutants was always an adventure.

"How the hell do you hide those things?" I asked Worthington. It had nothing to do with the matter at hand, but curiosity killed the wolverine.

"They fold up against my back,"he replied. "It's not comfortable, but I can pass."

"Just not at the beach," Summers said, beside me. A wash of momentary surprise from the others, then smiles. It was good to have the punctuation of that dry wit, however fleetingly.

"You remember the time we snuck out of the mansion at midnight to drive to the beach so Warren could go shirtless?" Ro asked.

"_I_ remember," Xavier muttered with a faint smile. He seemed content for the moment to follow Ro's lead and let the conversation wander. "I remember that I grounded you all for a week."

"It was Warren, Frank, myself and Scott," Ro explained to me. "Scott wouldn't let Frank drive."

"Nobody sane lets Frank drive," Worthington said.

"And what is wrong with my driving?"

"You're Italian, Frank. What isn't wrong with it?" That from Summers, delivered deadpan.

"Ta-dum-dum." Ro rapped the tabletop. And I had to admire them; they knew just how to set him up so the ex-volleyball star couldn't resist the verbal spike.

"I remember flying above the sea with the moon overhead," Worthington said. "It was fantastic."

"What I remember is you dive-bombing me in the water and trying to yank my bikini top down," Ro replied. Worthington laughed, wings fanning out behind him like a feathered smile. Placido grinned, too, and - after a brief pause - so did Summers. They'd woven him back into their tapestry.

_Yes._ The professor's voice in my head. _Storm has reminded him of a time when he was a part of us simply as himself, not one half of a couple._

Good observation, but I wasn't sure I wanted the professor skimming around in my brain.

_You were projecting, Logan._

_Then you'd better teach me how not to do that,_ I shot back.

_I would be happy to._ Tinged with amusement. _I don't necessarily want to read your every idle observation, you know._

It was, I supposed, a form of apology after the ending of our earlier conversation in the infirmary.

"Children," the professor said aloud then, interrupting the continued reminiscing, "I am afraid that I must bring us back to business."

"You have news about Logan and Scott's abduction," McCoy said. It wasn't a question.

"Yes, I do." Xavier paused, whether to gather his thoughts or to gather our attention, I wasn't sure. "The group responsible is not, in fact, a part of the FBI, although they do have access to government resources and classified information, including FBI documents - which is how they became aware of the X-Men . They refer to themselves as a consortium to represent certain global interests, and are related - as near as my source can tell - to the Majestic Project founded in 1947 by President Truman after UFO wreckage and alien corpses were recovered near Roswell, New Mexico."

"_Aliens?_" That from Worthinton. "You are kidding, right?"

"Not at all," Xavier replied.

"It's not impossible," said Ro. "I see little reason to assume that we are the only intelligent life in the universe."

"Theoretically, I agree," McCoy spoke. "Yet for the last half century, we have been doing the equivalent of _shouting_ into space towards any neighboring main-sequence star of the spectral type, stability, and age to support intelligent life, such as Tau Ceti, Alpha Centauri, and Epsilon Eridani - all to no effect. You have heard of SETI, have you not? It proved a dismal failure."

"Perhaps they do not wish to talk to us," Ro corrected. "If we persecute our own, are we ready to greet aliens? Were I an alien, I would think twice before replying."

"Whatever," I snarled. "Just get on with the damn explanation."

Xavier nodded. "This organization is not a part of the US government, although it is US based. The membership is international." At that, I saw Placido shift and sit back in his chair, crossing his arms. Xavier caught it. "Yes," he said, "the Italians do appear to be involved, Frank.

"In any case," he continued, "they concern themselves primarily with the recovery and study of alien technology, including a number of secret projects which involve implementation of said technology, and something called 'Operation Paper Clip' - the attempt to create a viable human-alien hybrid by gene splicing."

Beside me, Summers started to giggle with a freaky, manic edge that stopped Xavier cold. The kid's moods swung wildly of late. His injuries were healing, and Jean had been dead for three weeks. So however unsettled things had been around here, the shock was peeling away to reveal a purer grief beneath, less dramatic but more profound. His thoughts might be clearer, but he had less control over his emotions because numbness no longer protected him. "Scott?" the professor asked.

"And Logan thought _we_ were strange," Summers said, "strutting around in black suits and fighting a group called the Brotherhood of Mutants. This is too weird." Then the humor fell off his face with equally disturbing abruptness. "What in hell would such a group want with _us_?"

The professor sighed and rubbed at his eyes. "The obvious thing, Scott. Our special DNA."

Jerking to his feet, Summers slammed both fists into the table. "What they did to me - to us - had _nothing_ to do with stealing our DNA, Professor! They tortured us!"

Xavier made a motion for Summers to sit down. "DNA samples would have been acquired quickly, no doubt when you were unconscious initially. The rest of it . . ." He sighed and looked off. "From what I have been able to gather, they were testing you for your potential use as living weapons against what they believe to be a threat of alien invasion and colonization. You and Logan are of particular interest as a fighting pair, each having strengths which the other does not. Your 'escape' was engineered as a test."

"_What?_" I snarled. "They _let_ us run?"

"Yes."

I glanced at Scott, said, "I don't believe it. We caught them with their pants down. Literally."

Xavier's face had gone very sad. "That was part of the plan. Everything that happened . . . they were testing you to see what it would take to de-power you both physically and emotionally - particularly Scott as field leader - but also to see how quickly you could recover . If you could effect an escape given the opportunity, and without Scott's optic blasts. In space, blocked from sunlight on a ship, he might not have them."

I didn't want to believe this; it was too dehumanizing. But, "It makes sense," Summers said beside me, his voice tight. "Getting out was too easy."

"_Easy?_"

"Relatively speaking. They made mistakes they shouldn't have made." And I couldn't argue with him there. "They should never have left us together in the first place. We both commented on that at the time. Remember?"

"I remember." Whatever they'd done to us, they obviously hadn't wanted us dead. And if their mistakes hadn't been obvious, they had been mistakes nonetheless - from failing to blindfold me on the way to Summers' cell, to failing to keep any guards covering the door while they had their fun with Summers. And we'd used every mistake against them. "Are they pleased with their little lab rats' performance?" I asked. "What the fuck makes them think we'd fight for them anyway?"

"They don't care if you fight for _them_," the professor said. "But they assume you would fight for the sake of humanity, if their fears of alien colonization come to pass."

"I'm not listening to any more of this claptrap," Worthington said, pushing himself to his feet and starting around the table to storm out.

Placido reached over his shoulder to get a fistful of feathers. "_Sit down_, Warren. It doesn't matter that you believe it. It matters that they believe it, no?"

Xavier glanced at Placido. "Precisely. And they most certainly do believe it."

"But do _you_?" Worthington asked.

The professor shifted in his wheelchair. "I don't know. What my contact has revealed to me, what he himself witnessed, and what I saw in his mind - I think that there may be some truth to this . Exactly what truth, and what threat to the Earth, that is harder to determine. I reserve my judgment until I have more facts."

Summers had been staring at the table top, at his fingers spread out against oak. Now, he looked up, his smile bitter and smug at once. "They didn't expect meto blow up the building, did they?"

"No," the professor said. "All the data and samples they had gathered from you were in that building, and were thus destroyed with it."

Summers just grinned - vicious. But the implications worried me, and I could see that they worried the professor, as well. "And the people we killed?" I asked.

"The personnel were expendable, from their point of view." He flicked his eyes from my face to Summers' and back to me. "The number of persons murdered by this organization in pursuit of their larger goal is staggering. It's the loss of data that concerns them, and thus, concerns me."

"Why?" Summers asked. "I'd think you'd be pleased."

I was the one who answered. "They'll want to replace it, Scott. They need more DNA."

He got it then. "Son of a bitch - " And for the first time since our escape, I saw absolute, total terror take his expression. "I put the school in danger."

Not fear for himself. Fear for the students who might become inadvertent targets. Even now, he was worried about someone else. I gripped his shoulder. "We had no idea."

"I shouldn't have blown it," he whispered. "I shouldn't have blown up the building. I wasn't thinking, just reacting. I wanted to destroy them, but it was stupid. Ro was right - it was stupid."

"You didn't know. _We_ didn't know. I went along with it, too."

"It might have been the best choice anyway," McCoy said, leaning in to catch Summers' attention. "I'm not sure we want samples of mutant DNA in the hands of an organization whose goals we may not share, and whose methods we most surely deplore. To what end would they employ it? I don't even want to think of the possibilities. You did the right thing, Scott."

Xavier was nodding as well. "Henry is correct. It may have created certain problems, but if it were a choice between leaving our tissue samples in their hands, or destroying them, I would have ordered the latter - despite any danger to the school. There is no guarantee that they will attack the school; there are other mutants less well protected from whom they could acquire necessary DNA, if it comes to that. And we have always known that attack from the outside was a distinct possibility here. Nothing, really, has changed. The children are not any more at risk than they have always been, Scott.

"But," Xavier continued, "this consortium does have their own internal security division, called Garnet, a multinational black-ops unit. They are in charge of cleaning up messes left behind in the event of a leak, and I fear that you and Logan may have become a 'leak' of sorts. You both did more damage on your way out than they intended, and they lost all the data they had gained. Since they are particularly interested in your optic blasts and Logan's healing factor, I fear that they may attempt to recapture you. I also fear that they may try to take Storm as well - though not for her powers."

All eyes shifted to Ro. She'd sat up and Frank gripped her hand. "Why?" he snapped.

"Because their mission had three objectives. The first was the acquisition of mutant DNA. The second was to test Scott and Logan as a paired team. The third was to acquire the ova of an alpha-level mutant in her twenties or thirties for Operation Paper Clip."

Complete and stunned silence. "_What?_" Placido asked quietly.

Xavier shifted again, and for a moment, the mask slipped, revealing a man furious and afraid. "This organization, this _consortium_" - he spit it like a curse - "has been involved in, among other things, the abduction of young women for the purpose of acquiring their ova. _All_ their ova. They have the technology to preserve and mature human ova, which then become the basis for human-alien hybrids, fertilized by artificial means and implanted into the wombs of human women who bring them to term. This is what they had planned for Jean: to remove her ova, fertilize one, and re-implant it, leaving her pregnant. The fact that she was in a permanent partnership" - he nodded to Scott - "would have reduced suspicion. Their past pattern has been to recover the hybrid at birth, with a stillborn infant switched in its place for the parents to bury."

Summers had gone deathly pale and McCoy had half-risen to his feet, looking as feral as I ever could. For the first time, I understood his code name. Across the table from Xavier, Ororo had gripped the arms of her seat, her eyes wide and white. Frank had an arm around her, speaking to her quickly and quietly in Italian, trying to calm her, both her fury and her fear.

"So why did they kill her?" Summers asked finally, his voice small and his jaw working hard as he tried to come to grips with the enormity of it all.

"It was an accident," Xavier told him. "None of you were meant to die."

"Can we get her body back?"

"No." Quiet, but final. "Her body and tissue samples, like your DNA samples, were destroyed in the explosion." A breath of a pause. "I'm sorry_._"

Scott laid his head down on his arms and just wept. The sound echoed in the metal-walled room, more terrible than Xavier's recitation of the consortium's evil. This was the human face on it.

I set a hand on his shoulder and squeezed, but turned my eyes to where Placido and Worthington were attempting to comfort Ro. Would this organization go after her next? Over my dead body. I wasn't sure that I believed any of this alien-invasion shit, but as Placido had said, it didn't matter if it were true. It only mattered that this nutcase group believed it to be true. There were days I didn't believe in the mythical metal lacing my own bones until I popped adamantum through my knuckles and felt the pain.

Now, absently, I held up my right hand and released the claws. Everyone jumped but Xavier, and even Summers glanced up at me. I turned my wrist so that overhead halogens flashed off silver. "This wouldn't be the first time that a government has used people like us for guinea pigs. But just let them try to take Ro." And for emphasis, I drove my claws through the solid wood tabletop.

* * *

><p><strong>Notes:<strong> Regarding (non-film) people who keep showing up in my moviefic: Warren Worthington (Angel), like Hank McCoy, was a member of the original five. In the comics, Bobby Drake was the youngest of that group and Ororo wasn't a part at all. Obviously, the movie played fast and loose with canon, and I've made some adjustments necessary, but did my best. Frank Placido is _not_ from comic canon, of course.

Just a reminder that this is _not_ an _X-Files_ crossover, precisely. You don't have to have watched the show to understand the chapter. If you're familiar with the _X-Files_, great. If you aren't, it's not important. In any case, what occurs in this story would happen several years _after_ events in the current (2001) season. Please also remember that this is movieverse, so all comicverse plotlines are moot. The X-Men have never dealt with Shi'ar or other alien groups. Why involve the _X-Files _at all, if it's not a proper crossover? Well, my original plotting included something very similar to what's described above, at least in terms of secret international organizations, no doubt subconsciously influenced by _X-Files_ paranoia. As I thought about it, I realized that I may as well just use the original source of my inspiration. The reason I say this isn't a true crossover is because everything a reader needs to know about the _X-Files_is explained above.


	7. 6: Scott

I rested a hand on one oakwood panel of my bedroom door. It felt grainy and cool beneath my fingertips. The air was sharp with spring night chill, glass shards splintering my breath in my throat. Lamps along the hall reflected pale, not quite white - a new color in my spectrum. I was getting used to lights that weren't pink, and had come up here only when the sun had set because I liked living in a world without those damn glasses. I was in no hurry to have my power back, to be condemned to dim red and careful movement and always, always, _always_ being on my guard lest the glasses slip even half an inch and let out enough power to rip a hole in a wall or a ceiling, or a person. My power hadn't saved Jean, or myself. What the hell good was it?

My hand dropped to the knob. The lock had been cut, courtesy of an impatient Logan. I'd have to take the whole damn door off the hinges and replace the lock. Not that it really mattered. I doubted anyone at the mansion wanted behind this door except me. I pushed it open. Logan had been in here. Ororo and Bobby, too. I wasn't sure what I felt about that, but I'd been violated so often in the past few weeks, in so many different ways, that having people break into my bedroom to fetch things for me, even without asking first, was trivial. I'd spent too much of life worrying over the trivial. I had perspective now. Expensive perspective.

Switching on a light by our bed, I found the room exactly like we'd left it down to the unmade sheets she'd dragged me out of to shower and get ready to go that morning. A Saturday morning, normally my day to sleep in. I'd been grumpy. Jean had left her clothes on my desk chair, which annoys me. I'd left my pajamas on the floor by my side of the bed, which annoys her.

Annoyed her. God, when do you stop using present tense? At least I didn't do it aloud. Much.

Now, picking up her black sweater off my chair, I collapsed backward onto the bed and laid it over my face, crushed it to my skin. The scent of her made me dizzy, made my whole body ache, my groin most of all, a sudden hot focus for pain. I crawled further up the sheets and wrapped myself around her pillow, refusing to give in to the physical need, refusing to hump the goddamn bed like a sixteen-year-old. Control, control. I'd forgotten my body could flex itself for reasons beyond the prevention of morning bedwetting. Maybe I shouldn't be surprised - I was young, nominally healthy again, and in my own room surrounded by the scent of Jean - and I hadn't had sex in too long. Rape didn't count as sex.

But I shouldn't be feeling this, even if I was thinking of her. She was dead. I'd never hold her again. I'd never make her gasp and hiss my name. I'd never feel her buck against me convulsively when she came. I shouldn't _want_ like this; she was _dead_ and what was wrong with me that I could _want_ like this? Obscene, obscene. I was sick. They'd hurt me, they'd _fucked_ me, and I was sick, messed up in the head. Messed up in my soul.

I found I was humping the bed anyway, slow like I was fighting myself. I slipped a hand under the waistband of my sweatpants, down between my legs to grip myself, press into my palm, brought myself right up to the edge that drops off beyond thought and breath - but I didn't let myself go over, took my hand away and waited for the body rush to cool. Then I did it again, and again, until my pelvis ached, my body strained, and my penis was hard and numb. Punishment for desire, rough and no release. Maybe my body would be pushed past saturation, give up and be as dead as the rest of me.

It failed. I got up finally and went into the bathroom, turned the shower knob to cold, peeled off my shoes and clothes and got in to stand under the water until everything was shriveled and I shook, my skin livid pale and the only heat coming from tears, washed away as soon as my eyes released them, washed away like all trace of her. Nothing left.

God, nothing left. I sank down until I was kneeling on the floor of the shower, freezing water pouring over me, running too-long hair into my face and tickling my cheeks. I needed a haircut.

What a goddamn stupid thing to think right now.

Everything that had been done to me . . . I could have survived it if I'd just had Jean. But if I didn't, why bother? And for whom? The students? Xavier? The Dream?

Fuck the dream.

Whatever Bobby Drake had said, the school didn't need me. No one depended on me like Marie depended on Logan. I didn't begrudge him that; I was glad. She gave him something to live for. I had no children, no family. My own family had cut me off and Jean's had never accepted me; they'd put up with me as their daughter's unfortunate fascination. Xavier was the closest thing I had to family.

But I wasn't going to think about Xavier, or his insane explanation for what had been done to Logan and me, and Jean. It had all sounded like something out of a bad space opera crossed with Robert Ludlum. Most of my current life sounded like that. How many normal people put on black leather to go fight a guy calling himself Magneto? Of course, how many normal people could blast a hole through a mountain if he opened his unprotected eyes, either?

Correction: could have blasted.

Cyclops was as past tense as Jean. I'd spent ten years struggling with my power, learning to control it like a man learns to handle a wheelchair. I'd even come to take pride in what I could do. But I'd still hated the _goddamn motherfucking glasses_. I hated being stared at. I hated never being able to take them off. I hated living in fear of what would happen if I lost control, even for a second. If I could just be rid of the glasses forever . . .

I'd always been more than a little nocturnal, and now I had the night vision to go with it. Maybe I could spend the rest of my days like a character in an Anne Rice novel, only coming out when the sun went down.

I shut off the water finally, but stayed on the floor of the shower. I hadn't wrapped my burned arm this time and the bandages were soaked, heavy and sagging. I ripped them off and flung them in the trash, stared down at the ugly round circles left by cigarettes. They'd never go away, lifelong souvenirs. None of this was going to go away, go back to what life had been three weeks ago. My future was as scarred as my arm, burned full of holes.

Getting out of the tub finally, I dried myself off and studied my reflection in the glass above the sink. I still glanced twice every time I passed a reflective surface. My eyes were blistered from crying but at least the bruising on my skin had faded or was half-concealed by beard. I wasn't sure what I thought of having a beard. I looked like a folk band refugee. Certainly, I didn't look like myself. But then, I didn't feel like myself, so perhaps that was fitting.

I dropped my eyes to the scattery on the counter. It made me smile for some reason; what a mess we'd been sometimes. Jean's jewelry had been tossed in a haphazard pile near the back edge; she must have dumped it out looking for something, and I opened her little blue pillbox where she kept earrings, to put it back. Stopped dead.

Inside was a small collection of her hair.

My God.

It was a good thing I'd been leaning against the counter or I might have simply fallen to my knees. As it was, my sight tunneled and I had to grip the counter edge. The blue porcelain lid dropped out of my fingers onto the sink edge and clattered down to the bottom of the bowl. One corner chipped a little. Putting out a hand, I let my fingers touch the hair. Her hair. Exquisite fragility in red-brown like a wash of autumn folliage - auburn was a shade I could actually see now. Who'd done this? Ro? Not likely. Logan. It must have been Logan.

Picking up the threads of hair, I laid them in my palm. Jean's hair. I closed my fingers around it. All I had. All I would ever have. Very, very carefully, I put it back in the pillbox, every strand. There was a little more on the counter; I picked that up and added it, putting back on the chipped lid. The box would do for now, though I'd have to find somewhere safer to keep it.

I left the bathroom, left my dirty clothes on the floor and went back into the bedroom to dress. I'd lost a good deal of weight, so my pants didn't fit, but for the first time, I put on real jeans, not sweatpants. I suppose I could have climbed into pajamas and just gone to bed, but I couldn't sleep in this room. Everything in me was screaming to get out of here before I lost it completely. The shower had been bad enough. But I had one thing I needed to do first, what I'd come to do. Opening my sock drawer, I pulled out a small jewelry case tucked into the left corner, and opened it.

Our rings. Jean's had matched her engagement ring, molded to fit around it - the ring that had been lost with her. I touched the half that was left, incomplete, like me. She should have died with this. It should have been on her finger. Instead, it lay in the coffin of a black jewelry box.

The other ring was mine. Plain gold band, not too narrow, not too wide. That's all I'd wanted. A simple symbol to mark me taken, to say that I belonged to someone. I still did, even if that someone no longer lived. I was a widower in fact, if not in legalities. What the hell difference did two months make? I could still feel her near me, almost a physical presence, as if she stood at my side in death as she had in life. I'd never believed in ghosts, wasn't even sure that I believed in life after death, though I knew Jean had. But now I found myself unsure. Maybe it was just wishful thinking - my own inability to let her go, to admit that "Jean" had stopped with her breath and her mind. I needed to feel her, wanted to feel her, so I did. I stood here now with the box containing our wedding bands and it was like she had her arms around my chest from behind, holding me up. Tangible. I could feel the weight of her head on my shoulder, the strength in her arms, the press of her wrist against my sternum and her pelvis against my buttocks. So damn physical. I had a hard-on again, and leaned into the counter, closing my eyes. "Don't," I whispered to the air. She wasn't really here. I was just talking to myself now. After a moment, the feeling receded.

I looked back at the ring, remembering the day she'd bought it for me. We'd tried it on to be sure it fit and I'd made her slide it on my hand because I can be stupid and superstitious that way. "When you put it on for real," I'd said, "I'll never take it off."

She'd smiled and kissed my cheek and whispered, "You can be a romantic sop, y'know?"

"I'm _serious_," I'd replied, a little offended.

Laughing at me, she'd slipped off the ring and set it on the counter to be boxed by the jeweler. "That's why I love you, Scott Summers. You say stuff like that and you're completely serious."

Now I lifted out the ring. She wasn't here to put it on me, except in my imagination. So I put it on myself, flexed the fingers. It felt right. "I'm yours, Jean. I always was. I always will be." Closing the box, I put it away, shut the drawer, and left the room. Outside, it was storming. I could hear the rattle of rain against glass panes and the occasional scratch of branches. Lightning flashed, thunder right on top of it - close. Ororo, or nature?

Back downstairs, on the way to the lab and Jean's office where I slept now, I passed the Danger Room, saw the in-use light on. Curious, I keyed in my code. The exterior door slid aside and I took the stairs beside the inner door, up to the observation deck above the arena.

Storm, fighting alone. Angry, I flipped the program off and the intercom on, and she jumped, looking up at the window. Speaking into the mic, I said, "You know damn well you're supposed to have a second somewhere, if you're running a full simulation. Where's Frank? Or Warren? Or even Logan?"

"I hear the pot calling the kettle black, thundermouth." Her breath came hard; I wondered how long she'd been at it. "Who broke his arm in here while he was practicing - alone?"

That had been almost three years ago. "Why do you think I instituted the rule?"

She smiled at that, didn't reply.

"Is the storm outside yours, too?" I asked. Looking off, she nodded absently. I'd embarrassed her. Ororo doesn't usually lose control and affect the weather. As she'd explained to me once, altering weather patterns in one place at the whim of moods can have dangerous consequences in other places. That's why she practices calm. "What's wrong?" I asked.

"You asked where Frank is. Frank is in Cerebro."

"_What?_"

She studied me through the glass. "Wait a minute. I will come up." She ducked out the inner door and I heard her feet on the stairs. Entering the observation deck, she flipped on the light. I'd been standing in the dark. "The professor scared him this afternoon," she said. "He did not know anything of this conspiracy. And you know how he hates to be taken by surprise."

"He really believes there is one?"

"Well, someone had you and Logan - someone with access to government files, government level security, testing equipment, a lot of firepower, and FBI jackets. Not to mention that the media admitted it was a government installation that you blew up."

Uncomfortable, I ran fingers along the simulation machine and played with the dials. "That's not the same thing as little green men in UFOs. What the professor told us sounded like a Fox television special or an issue of _The Star_. I'm inclined to agree with Warren's assessment of 'claptrap.'"

"What? I may faint. You and Warren agreeing on something?" That won a rueful grin out of me. She grew serious. "As Frank said, it is not important if it is true. It is important that they believe it to be true. The professor's contact believed in this consortium, and the professor would know if he were being lied to."

I sighed. "Fair enough. But it's too fantastic for anyone sane to take seriously."

"This from a man who devours science fiction."

My breath went out, explosively, and I set my hands on the machine, glaring down at the controls. "It's not the idea of aliens, Ro. I'm like Hank. Theoretically, I think the idea of life out there" - I gestured vaguely at the roof - "isn't just possible, but likely. But that's not what we're talking about. We're talking about a shadow organization whose sole purpose is to keep the public in the dark about alien visitors, an organization who captured us, killed Jean, held us prisoner and tortured us, all supposedly as part of an elaborate plan to defeat the Evil Alien Visitors. That's not just paranoid, it's ridiculous."

"Then how would you explain it?" Her voice was quiet.

"Christ, I don't know. What do you think I've been asking myself for three goddamn weeks?" I yanked out a chair and lowered myself into it. It no longer hurt to sit down, so long as I sat carefully. I leaned back in the chair.

She'd put a hand over her face, now whispered, "I'm sorry."

I shook my head. "No, it's a fair question. I just wish I had an answer. It's . . . what the professor said . . . it's too _big_, Ro. It's too big to believe."

Her hand dropped. "That is what makes it frightening, no? This is not a single enemy to defeat in an isolated battle."

"We'd have to keep fighting them over and over." I nodded. "Be on guard all the time. We'd never know if or when they were going to try again. Christ," I said once more and leaned over to rest my elbows on my knees because a sudden panic-flash of fear made me weak. She squatted down beside the chair, took my hand, and gripped it. I realized that I'd flipped suddenly from skepticism into belief and I wasn't quite sure why. Maybe just because Storm was right. We'd been taken by people with too much information and too many resources. It beggared simple explanations or wishful thinking of isolated, mad experimentation. This _was_ big. Their rationale didn't matter. What mattered was that we weren't facing a single enemy. We were facing a black ops unit of the 'the government' with all the personnel and resources that could be brought to bear by such a group. "Christ," I said a third time.

"Now you know why Frank wishes to use Cerebro." She was still rubbing her thumb over my fingers. "He needs to learn what we are up against, if he can. He is angry, that he did not see it before . He blames himself that Jean died, and that you were so badly hurt."

And the fact that he did blame himself allowed me to stop blaming him. "He's not our early warning system."

"I know that. He does not. He is too much like you; he takes on too much responsibility."

I recognized her covert warning and her rebuke both, got to my feet. "I'll go wait for him."

She nodded. "I will stay here." Frank didn't like for Ro to see him, when he first came out of Cerebro.

Moving towards the stairs, I said on my way out, "Don't run the sim alone, Ro."

"Yes, Cyclops."

I stopped. "That wasn't an order. I'm not your field leader any more. Cyclops is dead. It was a request from Scott to a friend."

"It sounded like an order to me." But the tone was light, not accusing. "You are my field leader, Scott. By whatever name you want to call yourself."

I turned my back and got out of there.

Francesco was already in Cerebro when I arrived, Hank and the professor waiting outside the closed steel doors. They looked around at me, trying to conceal their surprise at my arrival but doing so badly. "How long has he been in there?" I asked.

Hank glanced at his watch. "Twenty-two minutes."

"Goddamn," I muttered. That was a long time to control and direct the immense power of Cerebro, and I glanced sideways at the bowl, towels and bottle of water waiting for him to finish. Using Cerebro always made Frank violently ill. Just one of many reasons why he detested the machine.

If Cerebro magnifies the professor's telepathic talent, allows him to sense minds more easily, it magnifies and organizes Francesco's precognitive ability. Time is a strange thing. What Frank sees are branching threads running in either direction - back and fore - all drawn together in one place as if pulled through a hoop which is the present moment. Each second forward involves decisions that cause the thread to branch, until there are so many possibilities, one can't possibly track them all. The past is the same. Not a single rope of "accomplished," but millions of past possibilities that stem from decisions made instead of decisions to make. On his own, Frank can follow only a thread or two at a time, usually that of the most likely future. And it is a vision more suited to macrohistory than the personal. He foresees the tomorrows of nations and public figures, those who determine our collective destiny. He'd seen the assassination of Yitzak Rabin, and had anticipated Bush's declaration of war on Iraq, and the attack by Pakistani terrorists on an Indian 5-star hotel, and that civil war would break out in Peru between the factions of Fujimori and Toledo. He kept saying change was coming to the Middle East, starting in Egypt, which seemed both an odd place for revolution, and hadn't happened yet. Despite how well we trusted him, it was hard to believe. Afterall, he hadn't seen 9/11 until the very morning it had occurred. He didn't see everything.

The hell of it is that there's not much he can do about most of these things. He'd sent an anonymous tip to police in Mumbai, but none had taken it seriously until a lot of people were dead. Like Cassandra, he foretells the fall of Troy and no one listens. Perhaps it's just as well. If people really knew what he was capable of, his life would be hell. We try not to take advantage of him, as we know his limitations. And we see what his gift does to him. Others wouldn't care.

The door seal cracked and metal hissed apart. Inside, Francesco was on his knees by Cerebro, shaking and gagging, the helm dropped beside him. Hank hurried in, ceramic bowl and towels already in hand. I grabbed the water. Frank managed to keep down the nausea until the pot was in front of him, then let out what was left of his lunch. In between retching, he said, "_Niente da fare._" Nothing of use.

The rest of us exchanged a look. Almost twenty-five minutes and the answer was nothing of use?

Hank got Francesco up on his feet and I handed over the water. "Shall we adjourn to the lab?" Hank asked. "Francesco can sit down and I can replace Scott's dressings." He glanced at my arm. "You seem to have lost some of them." I knew better than to argue. It wouldn't get me anywhere.

Francesco leaned on Hank and I followed, resting part of my weight on the back of Xavier's chair. I was exhausted, both physically and emotionally. This was the longest I'd spent on my feet since I'd gotten back. I doubt that I'd have been able to stay up at all, had I not eaten some solid food at lunch. Just oatmeal with syrup - Hank hadn't wanted to shock my system - but it had made me feel better, at least until it came out the other end. Hank had warned me that the first time would hurt like hell, even with a laxative. Pleasant thought to look forward to.

Logan was pacing about the lab when we arrived. Seeing me, he approached. "Where've you been?"

"Upstairs." I didn't feel like giving an account of myself. "I thought you were watching football with the kids?"

He shrugged. "I did for a while. When Ro said they were modifying Cerebro for Nostradamus there" - he nodded to where Frank had collapsed in a chair, head back, bottle of water in hand - "I figured I'd come see what he found out. Where is Ro anyway? I thought those two were joined at the hip? And Bird-boy. He disappeared after the meeting."

I started to reply when the door swished open and Ororo entered, took a seat beside Frank. I just gestured with a hand. It was my left; overhead lights winked off gold. Snagging my wrist, Logan stared at the ring, then up to my face a moment, let me go even as Hank called me over to change my dressings. I didn't feel like defending myself to Logan anyway. If he thought the ring was inappropriate, he could go to hell.

Hank noticed it, too. My left arm was the burned one. He frowned as he disinfected the burns and might have spoken, but the professor had turned to Frank. "What _can_ you tell us?"

Francesco sighed and sat up. "Not much. That is why it took so long. I had to stop finally."

"I meant no critique," the professor said as Ro rubbed Francesco's back. "Please tell us what you did see."

"Mostly confusion," Frank replied. "There are - " He cut off, eyes shut, and rubbed at the bridge of his prominent nose. "We stand at a cross-roads, my friends. There are always many futures. You know this. Now, the roads are more tangled, and shifted away from what was. Down one thread, there is the war between mutant and non-mutant that I have always feared, with the X-Men caught in the middle. Yet now the colors are . . . faded. I cannot explain better. That future no longer shouts to me as the story of what will be.

"Down another thread - I do not know. I do not understand what I saw. A kind of anarchy, a collapse of governments into small ethnic divisions and isolation. I see little of mutants, either to our good or ill. We seem to be only one of many, living on a country called Genosha. I cannot say much to that future. It seems like a kind of dark age when none gain the upper hand. It is new. I have not seen that future before.

"On the third thread, our kind rules under Magneto and the normal humans are slaves. The X-Men do not exist. This is not likely, but it is more likely than it was, just a few weeks ago. And on the last thread - also new - our kind are fugitives, but I cannot see from whom, or what " He stopped and looked right at me. "You lead a resistance, Scott. It is the only future in which I saw any of us clearly. Scott leads. Logan is there with him, and also Ro, and Warren, and Bobby - and EJ."

"_EJ Haight?_" I blurted startled. What would my old college roommate - who's not a mutant - have to do with it, no matter how close we'd once been (and really, still were)?

"Yes," Frank replied. "EJ and his family. But that is all I saw. This school does no longer exist." He was holding something back, I could sense it. He shook his head and continued, "But in no future did I see this shadow government of which Charles spoke, or these 'aliens.' And" - he looked up, swept all of us with a glance - "in none did I see peace."

Momentary silence. Until now, there had always been at least one future in which there had been peace.

Xavier recovered first. "Could the shadow government be what Scott and Logan and the others were running from?"

"It is possible. But I did not _see_ that. I saw only that we are fugitives." He sighed again, rubbing his face. "What I did see that disturbs me - in all of these futures but one, this school has ceased to be. I think we must begin to consider where we can take the children, that is safe."

"If any place is safe," Hank muttered as he finished up the dressing on my side.

"If any place is safe," Frank agreed.

"How soon?" Xavier asked.

"I don't know. Not immediate. There was no urgency. It will not happen tomorrow, or the day after, or even next week. But something will happen." He sighed and leaned back, ran a hand through his hair. "I will look again in the morning."

"No," Ro said. "You need to rest a day."

He shook his head and pushed her arm away. "_Tomorrow._ The threads of the future change, baby. I must follow the new ones. I must see if there is any way to regain peace."

Frank was the only person alive who could call Ro "baby" and live to tell about it. As for the rest of what he'd said, I wasn't sure what I thought. I knew better than to laugh. But the idea that I might lead an underground mutant resistance movement seemed almost as absurd as aliens and shadow governments. I could barely get out of bed in the morning, and half the time, I didn't want to. Pulling my shirt back on over my head, I dropped down to my feet and headed for Jean's office off the main lab. "Where are you going?" Hank called.

"To sleep," I replied, and slammed the door shut behind me. Picking up the book I'd started earlier that week, _The Secret History_, I switched on the light beside the couch, turned off the overhead and laid down. Chapter Five. _When the lights came on, and the circle of darkness leaps back into the mundane and familiar boundaries . . . ._

There were no familiar boundaries for me any more. I was living a secret history in a world as mad and labyrinthine and paranoid as anything Procopius could have dreamed up at Justinian's court. Wheels within wheels. And all I wanted was Jean. I could sense her presence here, as I had in our room. That's why I could sleep only in this place. She watched over me. The next morning, early, I woke imagining her body lying against mine, so real I could stroke her skin, smell her shampoo, feel her chest rise and fall with her breath. Maybe I was going insane, but the ghost in my bed comforted me and I went back to sleep

* * *

><p>Whatever history-altering events loomed on the international horizon, it was the mundane that interested me. Small matters. Like a funeral. It took another week, however, before I was ready to think about that. A week of keeping to myself in Jean's office, reading or playing guitar, while Frank sought some guidance for the future in Cerebro, with few results. Warren had disappeared back to New York for a few days, and I was content to see the back of him. Logan continued to hang out in the lab like he always did. I found it both familiar and annoying. We'd loved the same woman, we'd shared the same captivity, and now he seemed to have appointed himself as my personal watchdog.<p>

I think I'd have been mad at him if he'd disappeared.

"Morning," he said when I came out that Wednesday. He was reading the newspaper. It's part of his morning ritual: coffee, cigar - unlit down here - and _The New York Times_ which he reads front to back, even the obituaries. God knows why; it's not as if he's familiar with anyone in the city. But Logan doesn't like to be caught off-guard, so he reads the newspaper obits, listens in on conversations that people forget his ears can hear, and knows more about what transpires at Westchester than most people credit - including me, once.

"What time is it?" I asked as I crossed to the bathroom with a change of clothes.

"Almost noon." He didn't make any of the cracks he could have.

I shut the door behind me, used the toilet, brushed my teeth, and took some Tylenol. I still ached in places I didn't want to think about and couldn't do even twenty pushups, but I no longer felt so weak, nor did I wear bandages. Peeling out of my clothes, I showered, redressed in something clean, and prepared to shave. The bruises beneath the beard were mostly faded, and the damn thing had started to itch from dandruff. I hadn't realized one could get dandruff in a beard, but it had no doubt been helped along by recycled air in the basement that dried out my skin. The beard was a different shade from the hair on my head, too, a chestnut auburn in places as if I'd dyed parts of it. Piebald. Marie might like it, but Jean wouldn't have.

Abruptly, I grabbed the shaving cream and lathered my face, then methodically took off the whole thing. Twenty minutes and two razors. When I came out again, Logan stared a moment. "I wondered what took you so long," he said by way of comment.

"It itched," I replied. "My skin was getting dry."

He shrugged and went back to his paper. "Beard's not for everyone." It wasn't an insult, just an observation. "Made you look older, though." A smile tugged at his mouth.

"Fuck you." I held out a hand for some of the paper. He passed it over. After a minute, I added, "Jean wouldn't have liked it."

His answer was a grunt, but I felt his eyes on me. I didn't look up.

I couldn't read for long. These past few days, I couldn't do anything for long, and leaving the paper and Logan behind, I spent the afternoon prowling the lower levels. Instead of feeling dead as I had for the past two weeks since we'd returned, I felt jittery, as if I'd drunk two pots of coffee, or like a pressure cooker about to blow. Something was building up in me, the need to act, to get some kind of closure. It had been a month since Jean had died, for god's sake, but she still hadn't had a funeral. But then, if our lives weren't normal, why should I expect that our deaths would be? We had no goddamn body. When do you stop waiting, though? It was time to stop waiting.

I wandered at loose ends from room to room and thought about funerals. I might have gone above ground, but then I'd be condemned to the glasses again as soon as the energy built up in my body. I didn't want that, so I stayed below.

At one point, I turned a corner to find the professor sitting there. No chance encounter. He was clearly looking for me. Backing up the chair, he said, _Come Scott_, inside my head, and motored away. Perforce, I followed. I'd known this would come eventually; I couldn't avoid him forever. He'd let me for a while, or maybe he'd been avoiding me. I don't know. I'd hurt him, two weeks ago. I'd said words that couldn't be unsaid. I wasn't sure that I wanted to unsay them, however. Not because I wanted to hurt him - though if I were honest, a part of me did want that - but because I'd spoken the truth. He wasn't my father. Teacher, mentor, and once, hero. Maybe he still was my hero, but he wasn't my father. I had a father, much as we might not get along, and I didn't feel like playing games of nomenclature any more. Jean's death had imploded the fairy-tale we'd all constructed here. I wasn't Cyclops and I wasn't his son. I was Scott Summers, math teacher, mutant vigilante, apparent government target, and now, widower. Let's call things what they were.

We wound up in the Situation Room and I smiled with overtaxed irony. I suppose we had a situation here to sort out. He turned the chair to face me across the length of the room and gestured to a seat. I took it. He waited. He knows I have no patience for silence but anger was replacing restlessness, a feeling of being cornered, so I just stared stubbornly at a metal wall, as intransigent as I'd been at our very first interview, ten years ago. I'd been bitter with loss, then, too, but it seemed laughable compared to now. What had I lost at seventeen? My popularity and shallow high school life? Pity for poor Scott. This time around, I'd lost my wife and my innocence, and my hope in the bargain.

He must have realized finally that he'd have to nudge me. "Nothing to say, Scott?"

"What do you want to hear?"

"Whatever is on your mind."

I just laughed - a strained sound. I still wouldn't look at him. "There's nothing to say, Professor. Or so much to say, I haven't got a clue where to start. Why don't you read my thoughts? It'd save us both some time."

"I'd prefer it if you'd talk to me. Your anger might be one place to begin."

Glaring hard, I finally did turn. "Don't fuck with my head, dammit! I'm not your patient!"

He sighed and put up a hand to his forehead, rubbing it. The gesture made me feel guilty, which made me even angrier because he knew it _would_ make me feel guilty. Suddenly, everything inside me just exploded. Hate, rage, guilt, grief. I couldn't hold it back. I hurt too much.

"You pull my strings like I'm Pinnocchio," I said. "You call me 'son,' but I'm just your wooden puppet. I've always done exactly what you asked me to, believed in your dream more than you do. Jean used to say I was your favorite. She'd tease me, call me Teacher's Pet. But I wasn't, was I? She's the one you loved best, trusted most, the one you understood and who understood you. I was merely your stand in. You couldn't _fuck _her, so you let me do it."

A million emotions were flitting over his face, but I just kept going. "At first, you didn't want us together - I remember. You talked about the age difference, about 'inequality of life experience.' But that wasn't it, was it? You were _jealous_. Then it changed. Did you decide that you liked reading my mind when Jean and I were in bed together, Charles? Did you get off feeling me come inside her body? Feeling me do what you couldn't? Maybe she liked it, too. Maybe I was just a stand in for you both - " I cut off abruptly. If I thought I'd said the unforgivable before . . . He could kill me if he wanted to, kill me with a single thought. Stop my heart, stop my breath. I almost hoped he would.

I've lived with telepaths too long. I may not be able to read thoughts, but I've learned about the dark things that hide in the mud of our minds, the things we don't say in polite company - or even dare to think. Wishes, desires, secret perversions. I've learned how much they motivate us.

And I watched him pull back from the edge, watched him regain control of himself. He even smiled. "You want me to punish you, Scott, so you can stop trying to figure out how to punish yourself."

"Don't tell me what I want."

But he ignored me. "You want me to hate you as much as you hate yourself, blame you as much as you blame yourself. You doubt that you were good enough or strong enough, because you couldn't save her."

"Shut up."

"You've always felt that way, feared that you didn't deserve her. She was older, a doctor . . . _That_ was what worried me when the two of you began dating, and it never stopped worrying me. I didn't want you to feel inadequate, unequal, feel that she was somehow doing you a favor."

_"Shut up."_

"You never understood what she saw in you, spent four years waiting for her to leave you. You saw yourself still as an eighteen-year-old boy head over heels for the beautiful med student in her twenties - impossibly out of his reach."

"I said shut up!" I jerked to my feet. "You don't know - "

"But I do know." He tapped his head.

That enraged me past any attempt at cold logic. "You said you weren't reading my mind!"

"Nor am I, right now. But I don't need to read your mind. I only needed to watch you whenever the two of you were out together for the past four years. The tension in you, the banked hostility as soon as any other man looked her way with more than passing interest. You said you didn't own her even while trying to put her inside a fence to be admired at a distance - "

Rising, I stormed out. I should have known better than to instigate mind games with a telepath. But he doesn't have to be in the same room with you to keep arguing.

_Scott, she adored you with all her soul, even when you exasperated her because she didn't know how to make you see yourself as she did: a good man, a born leader, strong enough for her to lean on when the voices in her mind became too overwhelming. She would never have gone to anyone else. Not even to me. Her death was not your fault._

"Would you just shut up!" I screamed to the empty hallway. It echoed off steel and I started running to get away from his voice in my head.

_This conversation isn't over_. _ You can't make me hate you, Scott. I don't throw away my children._

I found a storage room door and flung it open to flee inside. Then I sat sobbing on the floor in the dark, pressing on my burned arm and hitting my head against a wall. Anything to make it hurt somewhere other than my breaking heart.

* * *

><p><strong>Notes:<strong> The length of time spent in Cerebro is a guess based on the film; neither the professor nor Jean actually seemed to be_ in_ the machine for more than a few minutes. As for the world events related here, this story was originally set about 3 years from the events related in X-Men 1, which hit theatres in 2000, and the movie itself was set "in the not too distant future." In the prequel, An Accidental Interception of Fate, the last chapters took place around 9/11. At the time I wrote, Climb the Wind (in the spring of 2001), all events would have been in the future, but 10+ years later (and 8 after it was revised following the completion of AIoF), this story would now be in our "past." Ergo I've adjusted events Frank foresaw to things that actually occured in between. Regarding _The Secret History_, Donna Tartt took her title from the well known work of Procopius, dating around the mid-500s AD a kind of _National Enquirer_ exposé of the Byzantine court of Justinian and Theodora. Scott's words to the professor in the final scene are based on a few things said in interviews or official literature about the relationship between Jean Grey and Xavier, and I freely admit to being influenced by Kat's very dark, but very interesting, "Seventeen." (A story not for the faint of heart; if you think _my_ stuff's disturbing . . . .) Please remember, grief is hard and anger is a natural part of the grieving process.


	8. 7: Scott

It was much later that I crawled out of the closet in which I'd hidden and let restlessness drive me above ground. The sun had set well past the horizon as I haunted the mansion's halls like a shade. April rain beat on the window glass and lamps on lowboys cast my shadow large on the walls as I trailed fingers over oak paneling, interrupted at regular intervals by casements. My footsteps echoed. Polished wood was live. I remembered the click of Jean's heels down these halls; I'd always laughed at her for wearing ridiculous shoes while she stood on her feet half a day, but I'd rubbed those feet for her, at night. Now there were only my steps, and the echo was solitary. I stopped before I reached the den. Out the open door, a pearl grey wash on the wainscoting and a low buzz reflected the television. Hypnotic, it drew me. Light in the shadows. I couldn't quite make out the program till I reached the doorway. Logan and some of the kids were watching an old rerun of _M*A*S*H_- Hawkeye harassing Hot Lips.

Logan will sit and watch that show and just laugh; he may have seen the same damn episode five times but he still laughs at it. So do I. He snorts at my German wheat beer, makes fun of my D'Amico briefcase, and despises my Piombo tailored shirts. But we both laugh at _M*A*S*H_ reruns, and he gave me his food when I needed it. He ignores me when I snarl at him and talks to me about Jean when I feel like talking. I put up with his cigars and his tendency to patronize me. I guess that's friendship.

He heard me enter, or smelled me, and twisted to look, hiding his surprise well. "Hey." He gestured at the television. "It's the one where the unit gets student pen-pals back in the States, and the girl sends Winchester that maple leaf so he can remember fall in New England."

"Yeah? I like that one."

Some of the other students had turned as well, to see who Logan was speaking to.

They didn't recognize me. Confusion, and the automatic wariness of the outsider that all mutants learn fast, was evident on their faces. Jubilee, Kitty, Dani and Kurt Wagner. They were trying to place me, wondering if they should know me, the familiar stranger in the heart of their home. Hide the eyes and hide the man. They'd never seen Scott Summers, only Cyclops in visor or glasses. I looked completely different.

Marie was there, too, tucked against Logan's side, as she often was. She saved them. "Hey, Scott," she said. "You want some popcorn? Kitty made three bags." She held one up, offering it to me, and I came to take it.

Dumbfounded recognition dawned on the faces of the rest. I should have laughed, but all I could manage was a thin smile. "Mr. Summers?" Dani said, as if none too sure of my identity, and Jubilee blurted, "Mr. Summers, your eyes are _blue_!"

Despite everything, I grinned. Jubilee would be Jubilee. "Yeah, they were blue last time I checked, which - until two weeks ago - was about ten years ago. Funny - they hadn't changed. And here I was, hoping for a nice shade of chartreuse."

They all giggled and Kurt asked, "What color is chartreuse?" His English is good, but has its limits.

"Green," Jubilee told him. "Like, yellow-green _caterpillar_ color. Ick."

"You shaved the beard off," Marie said.

"Yeah." Sitting down on the couch arm, I dug in the popcorn bag for the tacks at the bottom. I like biting them for some stupid reason. "Jean would've hated it."

I watched their expressions as they scrambled mentally, trying to decide if or how to respond to that, and Marie saved them for the second time. "Oh, I don't know," she said. "She coulda kissed you and found out what you'd had for lunch without reading your mind."

Startled silence, then everyone burst out laughing, even Logan and I. Jubilee howled, "_Double_-ick!" In the background, Hawkeye and B.J. traded jokes while they sewed up patients so their guts didn't spill out onto the floor. It's the only way to keep from going crazy. We are the 4077th at Greymalkin Lane, under siege.

* * *

><p>After <em>M*A*S*H<em>, I was commandeered and led off to the mansion dining room to help Jubilee and Kitty sort out their calculus. My classes had been taken over by Hank, who's an adequate teacher. Curiously, the _simpler_ the math, the better he handles it, but once students reach a certain level, he forgets they aren't his intellectual equals and leaves them in the dust. Thankfully, only a few of my kids qualify, but Kitty and Jubilee are among them. Their faces bore faintly shell-shocked expressions as they showed me their homework assignments and bitched about Sturm-Liouville problems and boundary conditions.

In retrospect, I wonder if an ulterior motive lay behind their pleas for tutoring. Jubilee is more savvy than she likes to pretend, bubblegum and death-by-yellow notwithstanding. But whatever plots they may have hatched to lure me back into the classroom, Hank's idea of "homework" really was appalling. The big blue idiot had thrown partial differential equations at them, for god's sake. Partials are fun, but I'd barely introduced ordinary differentials as part of the BC Calc sequence. Even Kitty, my math geek, was completely thrown. They were used to solving equations, not coming up with them.

In the midst of my attempt to explain when one might use Fourier analysis, Ororo entered with the phone. Wordlessly, she handed it to me. Too deep into what I was saying to suffer the distraction gladly, I took it with an annoyed, "Hello?" into the mouthpiece.

"Scott?"

EJ Haight.

Immediately I dropped the pencil, rose and walked into the kitchen for privacy. How appropriate, to talk to EJ the dietician in a kitchen. I should have called the man a week ago, at least - he was my best friend, even if he did live in San Jose - but I hadn't thought about it. It was as if my brain had checked out with the rest of me. "Hey, man," I said, then stopped, unsure where to begin.

He didn't give me a chance. "I called to let you know I'm coming out there. I got tickets. I'll be in New York in a couple days."

So - he knew. I wondered who'd told him. "You don't have to do that."

"Of course I don't. But I am anyway."

Typical EJ. Bully me. But. "I'm not sure it's safe here right now, Eeej."

He didn't reply immediately, and then I could hear the shrug in his voice. "Don't matter."

"It does matter."

"I'll take my chances. See you in 48, my white brother." And he hung up before I could argue further. I stared at the phone a few minutes, wrestling with mixed feelings. Whatever Frank Placido had seen, the Scott who'd been EJ's partner in crime for four years at Berkeley didn't exist any more. Maybe that's why I'd forgotten to call him - subconscious separation. EJ represented the innocence I couldn't reclaim, the youthful belief that justice would eventually prevail. "The arc of history bends slowly, but it bends towards justice." Martin Luther King. Once, EJ and I had both believed that. Now, I was no longer so sure.

* * *

><p>Some time later, past midnight, I was playing pool against myself in the billiards room when Logan wandered in. He had two beers, and handed one to me. Molson. He's Canadian down to his liquor. "You're the only one at the mansion who'll still play you," he grunted, watching me clean up the table and then rack the balls again.<p>

I paused to chalk the cue. "Sometimes I play badly on purpose."

"Hustling your friends, One-Eye?"

I smiled tightly. "It's no fun to play alone, Logan."

I'd meant it as a comeback, not a plea, but he set down his beer to go get a cue from the wall-rack. "I break. At least that way, I'll get to kick around the balls for a while."

We played five games. He's good. I'm better. I have an unfair genetic advantage. "I used to let Jean win," I said at one point. "When we first met, she didn't realize that I could actually play pool."

"How'd she find out?"

"I forgot myself. She came out to Berkeley to visit me my last year there, and I took her to a bar where my band was playing. We all got pretty smashed." I glanced up to see if he would make a crack about that, but he didn't. "EJ - he was my roommate - bet that I couldn't still clean up a table while drunk. So I proved him wrong. She figured it out after seeing that. Yelled at me for ten minutes for letting her win all those times. That woman had a _temper_."

He laughed and leaned over to make a shot.

"It's time to plan her funeral, Logan. It's past time."

His shot went wild and he turned to stare at me. At moments like this, when he's unguarded, I see his pain. He's just better at masking it. I took my place at the table, sinking everything methodically and at crazy angles, then laid the cue on green felt. "Will you help?" I asked.

"Why're you asking me?"

I looked off and didn't answer. Finally, he said, "What do you want me to do?"

"I'm not sure." Looking down, I rolled the pool cue on the tabletop, back and forth under my palm. "We talked about our funerals, Jean and I. Maybe that sounds morbid, but we did. It was sensible." Faint smile. "We were always _sensible_ - Living Wills, registered to be organ donors, all that jazz. We even wrote it down. So I know what she wants. Wanted." Verb tenses again.

He waited. I clenched my jaw and frowned, then made myself continue. "No burials. I don't suppose that matters now, but we both decided we didn't want to take up space that way. It seemed selfish. She wanted to be cremated." I thought of a bunker blown sky high in a Maryland field. "I guess she got it."

I broke then, wound up sitting on the carpet, bawling my eyes out. He came to sit by me, put a hand on my shoulder and let me cry. Finally I quieted and wiped my face. He'd been crying, as well. Light from the Tiffany lamp over the table shone on his wet cheeks. Two months ago, I'd have died and gone to hell before I shared Jean with Logan. But then I did go to hell. And he went with me. So it was Logan who helped me plan Jean's funeral. At least it was Logan until Jean's family got involved, then we were both superfluous.

Ororo had said they were waiting on me, but I'm not sure what they were waiting for, since they didn't want to listen to anything I had to say. But then, they never had, so that was nothing new. Against my will, they'd turned our wedding into the Social Event of the Season, and Jean hadn't had the fortitude to stop them. She never could stand up to her mother.

Elaine Grey is a force of nature disrupting the lives of everyone around her with gale force whims and neuroses, and Sara, Jean's elder sister, is a more strident but less powerful version of Elaine. John Grey survives them by living in his office at the university. Being dean gives him an excuse. Jean has always seemed to me the changeling of that family, and it was only after I'd gotten to know her that I'd learned how much of her urbanity was a front. She'd never dated until college, never been to a football game, never gotten drunk, never slept over at the house of a friend. Some of that had owed to the fact that she'd been in and out of sanitariums until her father had contacted Xavier. Nonetheless, our teenaged years couldn't have been more different, and she hadn't come out of her shell until she'd escaped the clutches of her mother by the expediency of moving three states southwest to Nashville where she could attend Vanderbilt. Then she'd gone wild - predictably - and had been hauled home to New York in disgrace. Drug rehab and a semester later, she'd enrolled at Columbia to finish her undergrad degree, then enter med school like a good little girl.

All that, I'd learned only later. To me at eighteen, she'd been perfect: the self-assured, beautiful, poised older woman. I hadn't loved her, I'd idolized her. I'd learned to love her after her hellish first year of residency and the re-manifestation of her suppressed telepathy had pushed her into a breakdown. Then I'd gotten to know _Jean_ - not the fantasy woman in my head. My own middle-class adolescence had seemed so humiliatingly ordinary, but she'd prized it. "You're my Trixie Belden," she'd said. I hadn't known what the hell she was talking about until I'd looked it up. Trixie Belden - spunky girl detective extraordinare - had been the farm child best-buddy of poor, sickly Honey Wheeler who'd lived up the road at rich Manor House. Leave it to Jean to draw a parallel from a childhood mystery series. And I guess it fit. I'd taught her to play darts in a bar, and baseball, and even how to use coin laundry. I'd been eight years younger and three times more experienced in bed.

In any case, Logan must have said something to Charles about our funeral discussion in the billards room, because the next evening after the sun had set, I was summoned to the professor's office.

By now, everyone had discerned that I didn't go above ground until dark, and that night not only Kitty and Jubilee, but all five former members of my calc class had been waiting by the elevator to ambush me. "Help," they'd said in unison as soon as I'd stepped off, Kitty adding, "Please take us back, Mr. Summers. Dr. McCoy is trashing our grades." Maybe they had conspired, but if so, their timing was impeccable. I'd reached that point when I needed to do something or I'd climb the walls, and these were my kids. I felt protective. So I'd herded them into our old classroom - I'd have a talk with Hank later - when the professor's mental call had interrupted. Frustrated, I'd left them with a promise to meet them the next evening, same bat-time, same bat-channel. As I'd walked away, I'd been smiling, and guilt had immediately crashed over me. Why should I get to look forward to anything? Jean was dead.

So it was in a state of no little emotional turbulence that I entered the professor's study to find Jean's parents there already, along with Jean's sister, the professor and, of all people, Warren Worthington. Logan hung about just inside the doorway, as if unsure of his welcome at these proceedings. They had apparently been waiting on me. I wondered what had been said before I'd arrived. Warnings about the mental fragility of the grieving widower?

Elaine grabbed me as soon as I got in the door, threw her arms around me and proceeded to cry mascara all over my shirt. What she said wasn't coherent, although it did include frequent repetition of my name. The woman can turn on tears like a faucet, but I just wanted her _off_ me. Her resemblance to her daughter bothered me as much as her histrionics.

I finally got her to sit down again. She'd pulled out one of those slick, advertisement brochures and was trying to show me something in it, yet her hands shook so badly that she couldn't get the pages apart. I took it from her to help, then saw what it was. "What _in hell_ do we need a casket catalogue for?"

_Scott_, warned the professor in my head.

"There's no _body_," I added, ignoring Xavier.

John Grey had flinched and looked away, but Elaine took a small breath before replying, "We should still have a funeral. I'm sure you agree that she deserves a funeral. We thought you might like to help us pick out a casket, Scott. I know there's nothing to go in it, but it's symbolic. It can give us all some closure."

Classic psychobabble. Elaine must have been talking to her shrink.

But as much as Jean had hated her mother, she'd also loved her. I owed Jean to try. "I agree that she deserves something." I forced my voice to remain even. "I'd like to have a memorial service here, at the mansion, so the students can attend. We talked about funerals before - just in case. She had my instructions and I have hers. It should be something quiet and simple. No sermons, no fanfare, no suits and ties - nothing like that. Informal. People can tell stories and remember her. No flowers, either. She wishes - wished - for any money to be donated to genetic research and a few environmental causes . She gave me a list."

Despite what I'd implied to Logan yesterday, discussing our funerals hadn't been an easy thing for me. Jean had bullied me into it. When she'd told me what she'd wanted, though, I'd said, "It sounds more like my funeral than yours." I'd expected her to ask me to throw a goddamn party, or an Irish-style wake. Jean hadn't been a woman who'd desired others to mourn. But that day, she'd smiled and touched my cheek. 'Funerals are for the survivors, hon. This is what you'd need.' She'd known me so well. And it's in the small ways that we reveal ourselves, whether our love is selfish or selfless. Jean's had been selfless and this was her last gift to me. I'd be damned if I let Elaine spoil it.

"In any case," I added after a moment, "and even if we did have a body, she didn't want to be buried." I could see incomprehension in their faces. Hadn't Jean ever told them? Apparently not. "She wanted to be cremated. We both did."

Silence. It was Sara who broke it. "That's absurd! We have a family crypt!"

"But she didn't want that. I was supposed to keep the ashes until I was ready, then spread them on the lake, here." From the spot on the pier where I'd asked her to marry me. "It's moot anyway. I won't bury an empty casket. I won't permit that kind of farce."

Elaine's control faltered, let slip the anger and the strain. "Maybe you can do without a gravesite to visit, Scott, but I'd like to have one, body or no." She dug her cigarettes out of her purse, fished one free and tried to light it three times. Warren finally had to bend forward to help. She smoked nervously a minute - the room was silent - then she said, "I don't understand why she would've wanted to punish me this way."

Colossally annoyed, I snapped, "Believe it or not, punishing you wasn't Jean's motivation. She didn't see any point in her dead body taking up space. It's just a body. It's not _her_. Don't you get it? She's _gone_. Her mind is gone. Who the hell cares what happens to her shell?"

But if that were true, why did I keep that small collection of her hair tucked away in a pillbox in our bathroom?

Warren had gotten to his feet, wings fanning out slightly. "These are her goddamn _parents_, you jackass! If they want to give her a grave, let them. It's not your choice anyway. You weren't her husband, even if you insist on wearing the ring she didn't put on your finger."

I started up from my chair but felt the metal-weight of Logan's hand on my shoulder. "Easy," he said even as the professor snapped at Warren, "Silence!"

Warren took a deep breath but didn't sit down. "No, Charles. I respect you, but no. I'm sick and tired of his posturing. Everything is always about what _Scott_ wants."

"_It is not!_ "

"Bullshit. Her family's waited for more than two weeks for you to get your act together so you could be involved, but now you waltz in here telling everyone what you will and will not 'permit.' You never could work _with_ people, Scott. All you know how to do is order them around. What god died and left you in charge? That's why I friggin' left the mansion in the first place. I was sick of taking orders from you."

"You left because Jean started dating me."

"Don't flatter yourself, Gamma Gaze."

"It's not flattery. You say I can't work with a team, but the truth is, you can't stand to lose."

"At least I don't get people _killed_ when I screw up."

_"That is quite enough!"_ The command was both verbal and mental at once, so powerful it rang in my brain like a bronze bell. Despite Logan's retraining hand, I'd been out of my chair and headed for the door before I put Warren through a wall. "Come back and sit down, Scott," the professor said behind me.

Spinning in the doorway, I said, "Why? It's clear you don't need me." I turned to glare at Elaine. "You have it all planned out already. You don't give a damn what Jean wanted, or how I feel. I'm just your life-sized cardboard _prop_ to wring pity from the guests. 'Isn't he so sad? Pity for poor Scott. Yes, they were two months from their wedding, what a shame.' How _fucking trivial!_ I loved her too much to let you turn this into a three-ring circus." Elaine's face was stricken, and John and Sara wouldn't meet my eyes.

"I loved her, too," Elaine whispered finally. "She was such a fragile girl. _Every night_, I checked on her in her bed. _Every night._ I'm the one who watched her 'gift' drive her insane. I'm the one who fed her because she wouldn't eat, I'm the one who bandaged her hands when she tried to scratch out her ears to stop the voices in her head, and I'm the one who gave sponge baths to a catatonic fifteen year old. How can you think _any_ of this is trivial to me? You're burying a fianceé. I'm burying my _child_."

Shame scalded me, as hot as grief, and I bowed my head. "I'm sorry." I still didn't like Elaine - I'd never _like_ her - but for the first time in the five years since we'd initially met, she actually sounded maternal.

Logan patted the chair I'd vacated. "Come sit down, kid." I did as he asked. Arms crossed, he stayed at my back. To Elaine, I said, "We can hold the memorial here." We'd get back to the matter of the empty casket later. "I have the names and addresses of her colleagues who might be able to attend."

But the mask of patrician socialite had slipped back into place, hiding all trace of the mother. "I'm quite sure you mean well," she said, "but it's impossible to have the funeral _here._ Your chapel is just too small. That's why we didn't opt for the funeral home, either. Jean was an important woman, both in her field and in the community. It wouldn't be fair to leave people out, just because they aren't mutants."

"I said I had addresses for her colleagues. I didn't intend to leave anyone out - "

"We need to have the funeral in a more public location." Her precise enunciation told me that she was hanging on to her temper with both hands. Jean had gotten her hot-headedness from Elaine. "I understand that Westchester is closer to New York than Annandale, but I think it's imperative that we hold the funeral where anyone is welcome. The Church of Saint James the Less is in Scarsdale. It's a lovely old church with wooden pews and stained glass windows - you know how much Jean loved stained glass. It's a sizable place, and I spoke with the rector before we came here - "

"Absolutely not!" It came out harsher than I'd intended, and I rubbed at my forehead, right between the brows, trying to calm down. Yet all sense of sympathy I'd had for Elaine was rapidly evaporating. "Jean didn't go to church. Neither of us did. It wouldn't be appropriate."

"You were willing to be married in a church!"

"I'd have done it for Jean; it was her childhood church. I'm not going to some strange place just because it's fancy, to have a memorial we can hold _here_. This is where she taught and worked and lived. This is where it ought to be. We're not doing this in a church."

"See what I meant?" Warren muttered under his breath, at the same time Elaine said, "I don't understand what you have against the church, Scott. You've always been so hostile to religion."

I rubbed my forehead again. Headache. And I couldn't even blame my power. I was going to ignore Warren. To Elaine, I said, "My best friend is a PK - a preacher's kid. I don't think I'm hostile to religion. But Jean and I didn't go to that church, didn't go to church at all, and I'm not driving thirty miles to hold Jean's memorial service in a church. I want it _here_, dammit!"

"There's no room here - "

"Actually, there is," the professor interrupted. "A memorial service could easily be held in the gardens."

"What about the weather - ?"

"Weather isn't a concern." Amusement touched Xavier's voice. "I am inclined to agree with Scott in this, Elaine, John." He made sure to catch Jean's father's eyes, too, in an attempt to diffuse it from becoming a battle of wills between Elaine Grey and me. "Although the school isn't normally open to the public - to protect our students - we have hosted the occasional community event in the past. Quite successfully, I might add."

And for once in his life, John Grey found a backbone. Patting his wife's hand, he said, "We should listen to Charles, honey."

Faced by this semi-united front, Elaine backed down. "All right. We'll hold the memorial here at the mansion." But she was clearly unhappy about it and her concession was followed by a small skirmish over what would be involved in the service itself, and who would conduct it - Elaine wanted clergy; I didn't. The 'discussion' continued another hour, and we hadn't even returned to the question of the empty casket. Exhaustion postponed further quarreling, but I knew it wasn't over.

Finally, Warren showed out Jean's family, leaving me to sit in the office with hands dangling between my knees, my head down. I felt like a horse run full-out and put away wet. Logan still had a hand on my shoulder. I glanced around at him, over to the professor, then rose and stalked off without a word.

I didn't get far down the hall before Logan had caught me up and we took the elevator to the lower levels together. He was chewing on an unlit cigar and I could tell that he had something he wanted to ask, but I ignored his shifting feet until he finally said, "What's up between you and Flyboy?" The elevator doors opened to spit us out near the lab.

"Warren and I don't get along," I replied as I headed for the lab doors.

"Yeah?" he called after me. "Well, I'd never have guessed. Thanks for clarifying that."

I didn't reply and he followed me into the lab, where Hank was crouching on a stool in front of the computer monitor for the lab's new baby: a field emission scanning electron microscope, so critical to the type of high-tech biochemical research that Hank and Jean had conducted. It could show each protein fiber in a strand of hair and I didn't even want to think about what it had cost, but I remembered the day it had arrived. Jean and Hank had squealed like pre-schoolers at the zoo, and I'd barely seen her for a week afterwards. My almost-wife had gone bonkers over a machine with a fully-automatic vacuum system, and ion and turbo-molecular pumps. My own poor pump, which wasn't turbo anything, had seemed woefully inadequate in comparison.

But I'd loved watching her use the microscope, glasses perched on her nose, hair twisted up with a pen through it, head tilted sideways in that way she had when she was concentrating. Jean's passion for her research had always dwarfed anything I'd felt for teaching. I was a good teacher, but didn't live for it. Jean had been a scientist first, everything else second - even Scott's lover. I didn't resent that; I'd fallen for her because of it. And when I'd seen her so completely caught up in what she was doing, then I'd realized that part of my place in the cosmos was to support Jean Grey. We'd been the king and queen of gender role reversal. Sometimes that had bothered me a bit, occasionally it had bothered me a lot, but when I'd seen her working, it hadn't bothered me at all. Yet what good is a clay base when the work of art it shows off shatters? I'd lost my purpose.

Now, Hank twisted on the stool. "So how did the meeting go with Jean's parents?"

"Elaine was her usual bitchy self," I replied.

"And he and the Human Eagle about came to blows," Logan added.

Hank sighed, grandly. "I had feared such an outbreak of unfortunate violence would occur between them before long."

"Why?" Logan asked. "I'd reckon it's a bit more than Worthington being unwilling to take orders from the Boy Scout. I take his orders, and I'm an ornery son of a bitch."

"Oh, it is more, indeed. Why not enlighten him, Scott?"

I'd been headed for Jean's office, but halted now, turned back to scowl at Hank. Then I spoke to Logan, "Warren and I once competed for Jean's attention. She chose me. Warren left."

"And Scott has, predictably, bypassed the crux of the tale," Hank said. "At the time Scott and Warren were, in Scott's words, 'competing,' Warren was _already_ dating Jean. Scott stole her away."

Logan gaped at me, then laughed. "'Stay away from my girl,' eh, kid? You were afraid I'd give you a taste of your own damn medicine, weren't you?"

"It was a different situation, Logan. They weren't engaged." I shot a glare at Hank. "And they were not 'dating,' either. She let him take her to dinner a couple of times. Jean wasn't an object for me to steal. She made her own decisions."

"Yeah?" Logan asked. "And would you have said the same thing if she'd picked _me_ a year and a half ago?"

"I would. I wouldn't have liked it, but I'd have respected her decision. Like I said then, if I had to tell you to stay away from her, she wouldn't have _been_ my girl. And that's why she ended up with me, not Warren. I never pretended to own her." Turning on my heel, I headed for the bathroom to get ready for bed.

"She may have chosen you," Hank called out behind me. "But you certainly staged an all-out campaign to win her, like Alexander before the walls of Tyre!"

I flipped him the bird. "It was still her decision."

That night, I dreamed of Jean and electron microscopes and the afternoon I'd gone down to lock the lab door and kneel between her knees because it was the only way I could get her attention while she was awake. We'd made love in front of the monitor but I'd known she'd been thinking about her current research (on frog heart cells or something like that), and for some reason, that had excited me. Not the frog heart cells, but the challenge of distracting her enough to make her come. With my mouth on her, I'd managed. She'd confided to me a month later - just a week before she'd died - that she still had fantasies about that afternoon, so I'd been planning a repeat performance, but had never found the time. I had time now. I had all the time in the world and I loved her in my head and my memory and wondered if her ghost could _feel_ it, if a ghost could come. Would that kind of ghostly wail sound different from any other? And when had I started believing in ghosts? Abruptly, the force of my own nocturnal release roused me and I realized that I was face down on the couch. Still only half-awake, I panicked and started yelling, rolling off the seat onto the floor and knocking over the chair that usually sat in front of her desk.

The door opened and the light flipped on and it was Logan standing there, claws out. Seeing that I wasn't under attack from anything more dangerous than an afghan, the claws retracted. Snick. "Bad dream, kid?"

No, very good dream, but - "I woke up, and I was face down. I must have rolled over in my sleep." I didn't explain that I'd been humping the couch; Logan could probably smell the result of that. And I also didn't need to explain why being face down would elicit panic. We both recalled the cell. And the bed.

"You want a glass of water?" Logan asked, like a parent with a child.

"Yeah. Thanks."

He got it for me. I was shaky still as I drank it, and then handed him back the plastic cup. "You should go upstairs and sleep in your own room, Logan."

"I will when you do."

I laid back down, face in towards the couch back. "G'night 'Dad.'" I heard him laugh as he backed out.

* * *

><p>EJ arrived the next evening. I'm not sure who'd gone to pick him up, but he sauntered without fanfare into the room where I was conducting class and plopped down among my students as if he belonged there. The kids stared at him. "What the hell happened to the shades, man?" he asked me.<p>

"Welcome to Westchester, Eeej." I glanced around at my students. "Class dismissed. I'll see you guys tomorrow night."

Reluctantly, eyes on the newcomer, they gathered their books and pads and headed for the door. Before exiting, however, Jubilee turned back to inquire of EJ, "Who are you?"

"An old friend," EJ replied. Jubes waited but he didn't elaborate, and shrugging, she slipped out finally, shut the door behind her.

"The eyes?" EJ asked, when she was gone.

I packed up my notes. I had no idea how much he knew, aside from the fact of Jean's death. "I was held underground," I said. "If I'm kept out of the sun's radiation long enough, the power drains."

"'Held'? Who held you?"

"Men." I didn't explain further, asked my own question instead, "Who'd you talk to at the mansion?" 'Who' would have a lot to do with what he'd been told.

"Xavier. He called to let me know about Jean."

Of course. "And to ask you to come kick my ass out of self-pity."

Slight smile. "That, too." The smile faded. "He's worried about you, man. He loves you."

I looked off at my own highlighted reflection in the window glass; the world beyond was dark. "Did someone find you a room here?"

"Yeah, I'm just dandy. Luggage deposited. Now tell me who held you, and who killed Jeannie."

"I don't know. I wish I did." It was, more or less, the truth.

EJ was aware of the X-Men, knew that Jean and I and a few others had rescued endangered mutant kids, and fought such hostiles as Magneto. I'd even given him an abbreviated account of the battle on Liberty Island a year and a half ago, since it had been all over the news. But there were things EJ didn't know, and I wasn't free to tell him. Not because I didn't trust him. He'd become for me the brother Alex had never quite been; I'd become for him the brother he'd always wanted. But some things weren't my secrets. And in this case, I still wasn't sure how much of the whole story I believed myself. As for the part I did accept - that there was a group of faceless men intent on using mutants for some kind of bizarre genetic experimentation - he wasn't in danger, and he couldn't help. I saw no point in alarming him.

"I just don't know," I said again.

He was watching me. Next to Jean, he knows me better than anyone. "What the hell did they do to you, Slim?"

My glance up was sharp. "Why do you ask?"

"Maybe because I see bruises on your face that still aren't quite healed. Pitfall of white skin, my brother, especially skin as pale as yours. You're thinner than I've ever seen you, too, and your eyes are flat, like somebody beat all the fight right out of you."

I didn't know what to say. I couldn't tell him what had been done to me; I didn't have the words. I'm not sure I'll ever have the words. "Somebody did beat the fight out of me," I said at last.

He didn't push further, but his dark eyes studied me very intently. "How did Jeannie die?"

I managed to tell him that, at least. It was only the second time I'd forced myself to repeat the story. After, he put his hands over mine on the seminar table and waited while I cried. Tears don't make him uncomfortable. He's never turned away from them like most men. Odd, now that I thought about it, neither did Logan. For all his gruff manner, strong emotion doesn't scare him. "Can you stay for the memorial service?" I asked finally.

"It wasn't why I came, but yeah, I can stay for it. If you need me, I'm here." He'd gotten up to hunt around the room for Kleenex.

"Never mind," I told him and rose, heading for the little public restroom in the classroom wing. I needed to wash my face anyway. My eyes felt swollen. He followed. There was no one in there.

"Jean's mother wanted a rector to direct the memorial," I said as I splashed icy water on my face. "That was one of several battles in our private little war. You missed most of the shelling, Eeej. Heavy artillery and big guns." Shutting off the faucet, I straightened up and wiped my face on my sleeve, then turned around and leaned back into the sink, crossed my arms and ankles and stared at the dun tile floor. "If it was your dad, it'd be one thing - "

"Do you want him to come?"

My eyes flicked up. "He has his own church. And he's in LA."

"Yeah, well, he's in LA. So the hell what? Funerals happen. Preachers are used to it. If you want him, I'll call him. He'll come. You're family. He always liked Jean. And he was supposed to be out here in a month anyway."

For a very different kind of ceremony.

But I thought about it. Elaine wanted her man of the cloth? All right. I'd provide one. "Fine, call him and ask if he'll do it. I'll get him a plane ticket."

Grinning, EJ pulled his cell phone from its belt-holder.

* * *

><p>Later that evening, I called Elaine Grey to let her know that Jeremiah Haight would be officiating. "You're bringing in a priest all the way from LA?" she asked, dumbfounded. "I thought you didn't want any clergy! We could have had Jean's <em>own<em> rector drive down from Annandale - "

"First, Jean didn't have a rector, Elaine. She didn't go to church . Second, Baptists don't have priests. He's a pastor. Third, he's a personal friend of myself and Jean."

"Oh, I see. This is that man you demanded had to assist at the wedding."

"Yes, this is _that man_." And Christ, that had been another battle, but I didn't even want to think about the wedding or the fact that Jean and I had spent most of our last night together arguing about some trivial detail yet again, and had slept with our backs to each other. It made such a classic, 'God, if only I'd known . . . . ' "You wanted clergy to direct the memorial. Jeremiah has graciously agreed to fly in to do it."

"But we could have our own rector do it - "

"It's not at your church. I agreed to let your rector perform the wedding because Jean wanted to have it at the church she grew up in and that went with the package. Her memorial is being held here. Jeremiah knew her, and Jeremiah knows me. Besides, he's the head pastor of a big church out in LA." I figured that would get her attention. "Three thousand members. I think he can handle this without any help."

"Three thousand members?"

She was so fucking predictable. "Yeah, last time I asked. He's a good preacher, and he's a good man." He'd taught his son to accept all persons, including one who wore red shades to keep from blasting a hole in his dorm room wall.

Mollified, Elaine agreed to have Jeremiah officiate. And when we all met again the next evening to finalize memorial plans, I was able to use my 'concession' on the clergy issue as leverage to refuse the empty casket, without looking like a tyrant. By that point, she seemed to have forgotten that I'd maneuvered her into accepting Haight in the first place.

I'd been Cyclops too damn long; I could never turn off the tactical thinking. But if it kept Jean's funeral like she'd wanted it, then I'd play field leader this one last time.

* * *

><p><strong>Notes:<strong> The names and details of Jean's family come from comic canon, though I've raised their socio-economic status and, as with Scott's family in other stories, I've felt free to alter their personalities. Warren's early interest in Jean is canon but I've intensified the antagonism between Warren and Scott. Please remember that my take on _film_-Scott's teenaged years makes him a good deal less insecure than the usual comics-Scott. EJ, like Frank, is an original character who pops up periodically across various stories I've done. For EJ and Scott's college years, see _An Accidental Interception of Fate_.


	9. 8: Logan

"What, my brothers and sisters, is the _praxis_ of **_suffering_**? Can an understanding of misery be conveyed by _talking_ about it? By trotting out the facts and figures that _objectify_ it, make it into a knowledge of the _head_? Can _statistics_ reveal agony? No! We must _feel_ it in our hearts, in our _guts_. Then we must _act_ on that gut knowledge! We must _struggle_ against the horror of suffering among our fellow men and women. What good is our _life_, if we are not engaged in this struggle for human _dignity_ and **_freedom_**?"

The words shivered down our spines and thundered out into the darkness beyond the floodlit haven of manicured mansion lawn, chasing away the encroaching demons of bigotry and oppression. Here, for a little while, almost four hundred people from six different countries and all walks of life, whether possessed of an X-gene or not, were united by a solidarity of grief and the liquid-gold voice of the Reverend Jeremiah Haight. Almost four hundred people, all gathered to honor one red-haired woman.

_Jeannie, you'd get a kick out of this. Even Jubilee is listening._

But beside me in our seats at the back, Summers fidgeted. He hadn't wanted anything like this, just a quiet ceremony for those who'd known her best. And yet his hatred for the public display was playing push-me-pull-you with genuine gratitude for the meaning behind the crowd: concrete evidence of the impact of Jean's life on so many others. They'd loved his girl. That moved him. When he'd first come out of the mansion after the sun had safely set, and seen just how many people were here, he'd turned right around and gone back inside. I'd found him weeping in his office. "They all came for Jean," he'd said.

And for him, too, but I didn't add that. The outpouring of communal grief for Jean had both broken him, and gone a long way towards healing him, at once.

"I don't think I can do this," he'd told me and the younger Haight.

"Yeah, you can," EJ had replied.

"I can't sit down there, in front of all those people, like _this_." He'd indicated his red eyes. Eyes red for normal reasons - and still visible. No glasses to shield his emotion. Xavier had told Elaine Grey that the memorial would be at night, and had brooked no dissent. If the kid wasn't ready yet to deal with his full power, Xavier wasn't going to push him into it. Summers had said again, "I don't think I can do this."

"So don't," I'd told him. "Sit in the back row."

"What?" The two of them had looked around at me. Clearly, it had never occurred to them that sitting under the watchful eye of four-hundred assembled mourners wasn't required. So much for thinking outside the lines. Usually Summers was better than that.

"Stay here until everybody's seated," I explained to him, "then we'll take you out there and you can sit in the back. If you need to get up and leave in the middle, you can, and return when you're good and ready. We'll get you out of there before it's over, too, so you don't get mobbed."

The younger Haight had grinned wide. "I like the way you think, Mister Wolverine." Then he'd turned back to Summers. "It's a plan, man. If the guests have a problem with it, Logan and I'll toss 'em in the lake. And Dad'll help."

Summers had laughed even while crying, and agreed.

So that was what we'd done. The kid had stayed in the mansion until the service was about to begin, and I'd taken perverse joy in planting myself between Elaine Grey and the entrance to his office. She'd gotten her grand sprawling epic of a funeral. He was going to get the privacy he needed. Besides, Elaine-control gave me something else on which to focus, so I didn't have to think about what we were all there to do.

Bury Jean.

Figuratively, perhaps, but 'figuratively' didn't make it hurt less.

Now five of us sat in our private back row: EJ Haight, Summers, me, McCoy, and the professor. Ro and her Italian Boy had chosen to sit with Warren down front. I might have considered that disloyalty to Scott, but he'd shaken his head. "Somebody needs to be seen and Ro always was the strong one." Thus far, though, the kid was doing okay himself, his fidgeting notwithstanding. On his other side, the younger Haight sat with a hand laid casually on his shoulder for comfort and subtle support, as we all listened to a black man talk to mutants about life and death, suffering and hope. The elder Haight's hypnotic, urgent rhythm reached right into the gut and gave a good squeeze.

"I assure you, my brothers and sisters, that the _praxis of suffering_ brings _together_ both action and reflection, commitment and hope, our _words_ and _deeds_. It is in our _praxis_ that we show ourselves for the men and women who we_ **truly are**_." "Words are like the _wind_, they can shake us, they can shatter us, **_or_ **they can propel us forward_._ But until we take that first step, until we unite our _reflection_ to our _action_, then _nothing_ can ever be accomplished! _This_, my brothers and sisters, is the necessity of **_praxis_**. _ This_, my brothers and sisters, is what Jean Grey knew to the _very core_ of her **_generous_** soul. _ This_, my brothers and sisters, is what she stood for. She didn't just _hope_ for a day when mutants could be accepted as equals, she **_believed_** that the _Day of Liberation_ was at hand_,_ and she **_acted_**! Like Moses, she didn't live to see the Promised Land. But like Moses, Jean Grey spoke to those ol' pharoahs down in Washington: 'Let my people go!' Jean Grey walked at the _vanguard_ leading her people out of Egypt! And _Jean Grey_ _died_ for what she believed." Not that most of the people sitting here had any idea how or why she'd died - including the Reverend Haight - but it sounded good . It was even true, in a once-removed kind of way. "So **_this_**, my brothers and sisters, is the praxis of suffering. **_This_** is our _human_ struggle for dignity and freedom, **_all_** of us together, **_whatever_** the color of our skin, _whatever_ the texture of our hair, _whatever_ the makeup of **_our DNA_**. We come here today to _honor_ Jean Grey, and we do it as **_one_**. And _that_, my brothers and sisters, is how _she_ would have wanted it. Look at us! The _many_ children of one **_Father God_**. Thus we bid farewell to our sister who has gone back to join her _Creator_. "The soul, like hope, is **_eternal_**, _death_ but a passage. Jean may be gone from among _us_, but _she is not gone_. Not so long as we remember the _praxis_ of her life and the_ hope_ for which she stood.

"On the night before his _own_ death, Jesus said unto his disciples, '_Let not_ your heart be troubled: ye believe in **_God_**, believe also in me. In my Father's house are many mansions: were it not so, I would not have told you. I go to prepare a_ place _for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will _come again_ to receive you unto myself; that where **_I am_**, there _ye_ may be also. . . . **_Peace_** I leave with you, my peace I _give unto_ you: **_not_** as the world giveth, give I unto you. _ Let not_ your heart be troubled, _neither_ let it be **_afraid_**.'"

It wasn't Summers who got up then and left.

It was me.

Not because of the Bible references. The man was a preacher, after all. It would've been weirder if he hadn't quoted Scripture. But _my_ heart, at least, remained troubled. With the kid to look after, I'd thought myself insulated and prepared. But Summers was the one who still sat there, and I was the one who ran away.

I went to lose myself in the hedge maze at the rear of the property's gardens. We occasionally used it for student training exercises, and the students used it for romantic trysts, or to scare the shit out of each other for fun. Now, I sat in the gazebo at its heart and rolled a cigar round and round in shaking fingers.

_Jeannie, Jeannie . . . ._

_I loved you, y'know, woman._

I could pick out Summers' footfall a long time before he found me. He was alone, and he started a little when he emerged from the final line of hedges to find me already sitting there in the gazebo's shadow. He didn't say anything, just came to join me. Even in the near-darkness, I could see that his eyes were swollen again. He'd been crying - hard - and hadn't completely stopped. His nose still ran and tears leaked.

After a long stretch, I asked, "It over?"

"Probably by now. People were still talking when I left, but it was winding down."

I grunted. The part that I'd skipped had been the open-mic floor show, as Summers had unkindly dubbed it: the chance for people to stand up and offer some personal memory of Jean for public consumption. In a small gathering, it would've been meaningful, but . . . "It wound up being a game of 'I knew Jean better than you did,'" Summers added - which was pretty much exactly what I'd expected. "For God's sake, Logan, why do people have to show each other up even at something like this?"

"I dunno, kid. Human nature. We're pack animals, edging for dominance."

He leaned over and put his forehead in his hands, muttering, "Leave me out of the pack, then."

I laughed. "So says the alpha-male X-Man."

"I didn't ask to be leader. The professor appointed me. Well, more or less."

"Maybe so. Don't change the fact you suit it."

He didn't reply to that, just lifted his face again to look off outside the gazebo, spoke after a minute. "The maze seemed like a good place to stay out of the way."

"_I_ thought so."

He snorted. "Sorry."

I just shook my head. It wasn't his presence I minded.

"I didn't expect you to leave me," he said then, tone faintly bitter.

And now it was my turn to tell him, "Sorry," and, "I lost her, too, y'know."

He didn't reply to that, though even in the dark, I could see how his jaw tensed at my words. It was the one thing we'd never really gotten past, just overlooked because circumstances had demanded it - circumstances that were now over, although they had complicated the old tension because I couldn't see him as the uptight Frat-Boy asshole anymore. He'd become the son I couldn't remember if I had, and I guess that made this whole little love triangle weirdly Oedipal in reverse.

Finally, he ventured, "Logan - "

"Don't, kid. You really want to fight about it tonight?"

He shook his head. Some things are too complex for words to navigate without slicing ourselves to pieces on the rocks of conflicted feelings.

So we stayed there - not talking, just sitting - until the echo of voices in the yard and garden beyond had disappeared. I'd broken the silence once to say, "People might think you went to drown yourself in the lake."

"Nah," he'd replied. "I told EJ and Hank where I was going."

At last, we rose to head back to the mansion. On the way, our footsteps fell into unintentional synch and somewhere out of the blue, he asked, "Do you believe in ghosts, Logan?"

Where had that come from? "I don't know. Never met one. Have you?"

He didn't reply directly. Instead, he said, "I'm not sure I believe in God because I don't think God ever believed in me. But I don't know about ghosts. I think I believe in ghosts."

"You want to elaborate on that?"

"No," he replied. I opened my mouth once more, but then shut it. I didn't want to know. If Jeannie was haunting him, I just didn't want to know.

_God, woman, won't you come haunt me?_

Most of the mourners were gone by now - it was almost midnight - but the mansion was still full of light. Students and a few guests milled about, making an impromptu wake. As Summers and I passed through the gardens towards the atrium door, we came upon Ororo, Placido, and the younger Haight sitting outside on a shale-stone wall edging a flower bed. They had a bottle of rum and some kind of disgusting pink juice to mix with it, and they were already three sheets to the wind.

Ro motioned Summers over to hand him her glass. "Drink, Scott."

He didn't argue with her, just downed what was left of the mix and let her fill it again for him - generous on the rum. Placido laid down his cigarette on the wall while he went inside to fetch another pair of glasses. When he returned, I took my rum straight, and his lighter for my cigar. "Where's Warren?" Summers asked.

"Inside."

"Doing what? Playing 'good son'?" Vicious, vicious.

"Don't, Scott," she scolded. "He knows that you cannot do it, so he is keeping her away from you."

"Yeah, right," Summers said.

"Chill, man." Haight leaned back on the stone ledge. "The dude's okay."

"Fuck you," Summers told him cheerfully, finishing a second glass of rum and letting Ro pour him more. At that rate, he was going to be smashed fast. The kid couldn't hold his liquor worth shit. I'd heard Jean say once that it had to do with his unique metabolism. He had a similar problem with sugar: three cookies was his limit, though I'd seen him wolf down a whole bag of Oreos with chocolate milk. That was a sight - Cyclops on a sugar high. Hyper for half an hour, then crash and burn.

Now, Haight ignored Summers to pour himself another drink. "I thought Baptists didn't drink, dance, or play cards?" I said to Haight, to change the subject.

He laughed. "Yeah, well, I was a PK - "

"Preacher's kid," Summers interrupted to define.

" - hell on two legs," Haight finished. "And it's only _Southern_ Baptists who don't dance or play cards. 'Course, most of 'em do anyway."

"EJ dances," Summers added, his words already slurring. "Not much of a card shark, though."

"Cards are your ball of wax, Slim," Haight agreed. "Give me basketball any day."

"The basketball's in the shed." Summers nodded towards the small shed on the far side of the ball court, and fished in his pocket to toss Haight his keys.

Haight missed the keys and had to pick them up off the flagstones, then studied Summers for a minute. "You wanna go one-on-one, Slim Boy?"

"Dressed like this?" Summers indicated his suit and Haight's.

Standing, Haight pulled off his jacket to fold it carefully, inside out, then undo his tie, remove his shirt, step out of his dress shoes and doff his socks. The chill spring air goose-pimpled his smooth dark skin. Summers just watched a moment, then laughed and shook his head. Finishing his third glass and handing it empty to Placido, he did the same thing. And the two of them picked their way barefoot over flagstones towards the shed beside the ball court.

God knew what the guests would think of the grieving widower playing basketball after the funeral, still in his suit pants. Well, if they didn't get it, they could take a flying leap. Having retrieved the ball, Haight and Summers were taunting each other across the asphalt - loud - and the ball made a staccato punch in the night air. I could see that some of the kids had come out to watch them play. Even drunk, Summers was making hoops. Those eyes.

Marie, Bobby Drake, and Jubilee had wandered over to join us. Drake helped himself to some of the rum behind Ro's back and Placido didn't stop him, handed him Summers' glass instead. "Since when is basketball a contact sport?" Marie asked me.

"Since One Eye needs somebody to beat about the court for an evening."

"God, they're really bad," Jubilee said.

"They're really _drunk_," Ro corrected.

At that point, a third figure came winging down on the court from above. Worthington, shirtless like the other two. "Summers, you need help," he called as he landed.

"No powers," Haight called back, and looked around to where I still stood in the garden. "Hey, Logan! Two-on-two?"

I waved a hand and shook my head in denial. Behind me, Placido stood, crushed out his second cigarette and prepared to join them. "Frank," Ro said, "They will kill you."

"This is new?" he asked, smiling. "They always did, no?" And he jogged off.

It wound up being more than two-on-two. Drake and some of the older kids got in on the game, along with ex-football star McCoy and the Right Reverend Haight - who proved to be a good ball player despite his age. The professor had come out to join us. "Jeannie would have loved it," I said to him. I could almost feel her there watching with us. Xavier nodded.

They played until three in the morning, then Haight put Summers to bed exhausted enough to sleep. I sat in the garden with Xavier, Ororo, and Marie long after they'd gone, a bottle of rum and the ghost of Jean with us until sunrise.

* * *

><p>The next morning, life went on. The elder Haight returned to LA the day after the memorial, and the younger Haight returned to San Jose a few days after that. The night before he left, he pulled me aside to give me one of his cards and his cell-phone number. "You call me any time if you think Slim needs me. I'm seriously worried about the shithead." He studied me a minute, then added, "Look, I don't know what went down in Baltimore. Slim ain't saying and Xavier did one of his 'need to know' snow jobs. I'm not going behind their backs, to ask you," he added before I could scold him. "But I <em>have<em> seen enough to know there's some serious shit involved here, more than the usual mutant hate-crimes stuff. So I'm telling you the same thing I told Slim and Xavier.

"You guys get in trouble and need a safe house, you let me know. Or really, you let my dad know. Way back in the '80s, he did some people smuggling for the Sanctuary movement. You heard of it?" I nodded. I'd spent time in Mexico and Central America. The Sanctuary movement had been involved getting refugees out of El Salvador, Guatemala, and other countries with death squads. Most of the movement had been run by renegade priests cast in the mold of Bishop Romero, or by left-wing missionaries. They'd snuck a number of people into the US to save their lives, against official US policy and in the face of FBI investigation. A Latino underground railroad. I'd seen the work of those death squads; a few had even tried to recruit me. But I don't kill like that. It didn't surprise me to learn that Reverend Haight had been involved in it. Seemed like the sort of thing that family would do.

"He's still got contacts," the younger Haight said now, "even a safe-house if you need it. Safe houses are useful, for a church." He smiled wryly.

I shook my head. "You don't know what you're getting into, kid. Xavier's right. Stay clear of this. No need to involve you."

"I am involved. I don't know what the hell happened, but somebody hurt my brother and killed the woman who was going to be his wife. I'm _involved_, man. And I can take care of myself better than you think."

So I said, "Okay," and started to walk away before spinning to throw him an unexpected punch. I'd meant to prove my point. I wound up on my ass.

"See?" Haight said. I chuckled and picked myself up, shook my head. "I got a third degree black belt," he explained. "Slim and I used to spar together."

"I suspect it was less sparring and more you kicking him around the mat." I recalled what Placido had said. This family would help us. And I believed it.

Haight just grinned whitely.

* * *

><p>If EJ Haight returned to his job in California, both Frank Placido and Warren Worthington continued to hang around Westchester. Placido seemed to have given up, at least for the moment, his political aspirations in Italy. He lived out of Ro's room and spent his time cloistered in Cerebro, cloistered with Xavier, or cloistered with Ro. And the expression he wore became increasingly anxious. Warren made a triangle between Westchester, his offices in Manhattan, and his home on Long Island. I found that he'd also been scoping out locations to move the school. Or at least, to move the younger kids. Space wasn't the problem. Between his fortune and Xavier's, they turned up a brownstone in Boston fairly quickly. The problem was staffing it. Xavier ran a real school that taught real classes, and kids walked out with a diploma. Some of them even went on to college if they were able to pass in the real world. The instructors all had teaching certificates and taught standard high school courses in addition to the odd elective.<p>

But this meant that if the student body was divided in half, _someone_ had to teach the new group, and teachers willing to take on classes of mutant students weren't crawling out of the woodwork. Xavier had called a meeting in the Situation Room - myself, Summers, Worthington, McCoy, Ororo and her Italian Boy, and Xavier himself - to let Warren lay out his preliminary plans for a new location in Boston. Worthington went over the building and what could be done to it, some other housekeeping details and then concluded, "The professor called in some favors; Moira MacTaggert and Sean Cassidy have agreed to come direct it for a while, as interim headmasters." I didn't know much about either, but had met both at the funeral. Cassidy was a mutant; MacTaggert wasn't. She was a doctor, in fact - a colleague of McCoy and Jean's. "They returned to Scotland to close up their house and prepare for a longer stretch here. Bobby Drake and Kitty Pryde have also volunteered to assist come summer. He's transferring to Harvard in the fall, and she was accepted to MIT, so they'll be in Boston anyway."

"_Bobby_ at Harvard?" Ororo asked, trying not to laugh.

"Robert is smarter than you credit him, Ro. Smarter than he credits himself," McCoy put in. "I wrote him a letter of recommendation."

"And thus doth Harvard perpetuate itself," Worthington muttered, with humor. I knew he'd been a Yale boy. "In any case, Bobby and Kitty will be in charge of the residence halls starting in June but we'd like to move at least the youngest kids out there as soon as possible, and then follow them with the older students at the end of May. That would end the school year somewhat early, but there are extenuating circumstances."

Summers, who'd been staring fixedly at the tabletop, started shaking his head. "What?" Worthington asked with a bit more belligerence than he needed to.

"Somebody tell me again why we're doing this?" Summers looked up.

McCoy took his rhetorical question at face-value and started to reply, "We must transfer the children to a safer - "

Summers held up a hand. "_Safer?_ The mansion is a fucking _fortress_, Hank. I've been thinking about this. There's no way to make a city brownstone as defensible as we are here. The more I've thought, the more I've realized that this move is a very bad idea."

"Scott," Xavier said, "we would be depending on secrecy - "

"Secrecy! Our 'secrecy' is blown all to bloody hell! These people may not know the names and mutations of our students, but they've got to goddamn guess they _are_ mutants! Why else would they _be_ here? 'Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters.' It doesn't take rocket science to figure that one out: if the teachers - who also just happen to be the X-Men - are mutants, the _students_ are also probably mutants."

"But the mansion could be attacked, and how would we hold out against that kind of force?" Ro asked. "We can't put the students at risk that way."

"I know!" Summers snapped, distressed. He didn't continue for a minute, just clicked a ballpoint pen open and closed. Then he said, "Sending them to Boston will make them sitting ducks. If these people can't get to us, and they want mutant test subjects, what makes you think they won't take our kids? You don't attack the fort if you can catch an army in the field."

"I agree," I said before anyone else could speak. "It's not safe for 'em to be here. But it's safer than sending 'em to Boston - at least until we find out what this consortium is going to do next, what their ultimate objectives really are." I turned to stare pointedly at Frank Placido. "That's your job 'Nostradamus.'"

He spread his palms flat on the tabletop and didn't reply for a long time. No one interrupted his thoughts. Finally, he looked up at us and said simply, "I am not sure. It seems more certain every day that a war is coming and we shall be caught in the middle. "Everything is changing, the futures are changing." Placido paused to look up at the ceiling, as if he might find his answers written on it. "Scott may be right, that for now, this school is safest. But Warren's project is important, too, for we must have a new place to send the childrens when the school is safe no longer. I think that we must be very quiet, in what we do. That would mean no big translocations yet, to warn our enemies."

"So when _do_ we move the kids?" Worthington asked him. He seemed annoyed, although I wasn't sure if it was because Summers had opposed him and been backed by both myself and Placido, or because he'd put work into finding this place and making arrangements, and now was being told to cool his heels. Xavier appeared to have decided to sit back and watch his first students hash it out among themselves.

"You will know when the time has come," Placido told Worthington.

"Dammit! Could you manage to be just a little _more_ vague, Frank?" Worthington slapped down the folder full of notes that he'd brought. "I'm trying to make some plans, here!"

"Make your plans, as I said." Placido met Worthington's eyes. "Take the youngest childrens. But make no big translocations yet."

Ro's Italian Boy had gone transcendent on us, his face a cool mask like a Roman marble. Leaning over the table a bit, I ran a finger over the holes that my claws had left in the top a few weeks ago. "Look, kid. If you know something, spit it out. In detail." I glanced sideways at Summers, who sat on my left. "The more we know, the better we can prepare."

"That's not how Frank sees things," Summers and Ro said, almost in unison, but it was Placido who explained, "I see flashes, Logan - like a dream. They may be very specific, but so much specific that I cannot_ place_ them in time or space. I may know that a car will hit a child, see the details of the event, see the pattern of blood on the child's body after. But what day will it occur? What time? What street? What _city_? These things I may _not _know. That is why it is so difficult for me, to look into the futures of individuals. It is easier when I look to peoples and places that are well-known, to me, or to the world, so that I might guess some things I do not see. But even so, it is not like to watch a movie. It is as if someone brought me a box full of photographs and poured them out at my feet. I must put them together and try to understand them."

He rubbed at his forehead, then went on. "There is a pattern to the future and some futures are more probable than others. Once certain choices are made, the present may race towards any given possibility like a car slides on a wet road. But nothing in the future is _certain_. A single choice or a single accident may change all."

"For want of a nail a shoe was lost, for want of a shoe a horse was lost - " I began, and Summers took it up, "for want of a horse a message was lost, for want of a message a battle was lost, for want of a battle a war was lost. Yes, exactly. But we _can_ fight the future," he added.

Placido had glanced to Xavier, who nodded and said, "You may as well tell them, Frank."

Placido took a deep breath. "We can try to fight the future, yes - but by the fall time, it may be that this school will not exist, even this house will not exist. No one will live here but raccoons and rabbits and foxes."

Our little company erupted in astonished chatter which all boiled down to variations on, "When?"

When would we lose our home?

"I do not know!" Placido shouted, appearing upset for the first time. "And it is still but one of the futures that I see. It may not come to pass."

Everyone quieted. Summers went back to clicking the ballpoint furiously. Out. In. Out. In. I put a hand over his to stop him, and he drew in breath sharply, slipped the pen back in his pocket. "Tell us what you do know. As Logan said, the more you foresee, the better we can prepare. Even if you don't know the time, tell us what you see happening."

"I have seen only the result, not the cause. I cannot say what might destroy this place. Perhaps it will burn. I have seen glass melted and brick cracked by heat, buried under the fall leaves."

"What will be left? The underground? The underground is hidden from - "

"Nothing will be left, Scott. Nothing."

No one replied to that. After ten breaths, Placido continued, "We mutants will be forced to register ourselves. Many will be disappeared. It will not happen only here, in the States. It will happen all over the world. For the obvious of us, there will be few places to hide. For the less obvious, to hide in plain sight will be best. But no place will be safe for our people."

"That's different from now?" Summers asked, voice sarcastic.

"Yes. If this is the future which comes to pass, we shall not be fighting the small groups, like the Friends of Humanity here, or _Le Puriste_ in Italy. We shall be fighting governments and shadows of governments, on the run like _i partigiani_ in Italy after the Second World War - the partisans - living outside the law."

"And if that does come to pass, we must be prepared," Xavier finished, nodding to Worthington. "You must have a new school ready."

* * *

><p>One of the tasks to which I'd set myself each evening after dark was walking the mansion perimeter, checking our defenses, since, as often as not, I couldn't sleep much anyway. Security of the normal sort had been in place here for a long time, designed primarily to prevent burglary, but also to stop any attacks from small groups of non-mutants bent on mischief. After Mystique had infiltrated the grounds, however, to pose as Bobby and poison Cerebro, Summers had devised a whole new level of defense. And when I'd come back from Canada, I'd improved upon it. But in truth, I hadn't had much to offer. What the kid lacked in actual combat experience, he made up for in aptitude for strategy and tactics. He'd invented things that would never have occurred to me, and he hadn't been kidding when he'd told McCoy that the mansion (namely the underground) could be locked down like a fortress. It had been after reviewing his mansion defense plans that I had, finally, quit bucking his command. I still might not have liked him much, but I could recognize real ingenuity when I saw it.<p>

Now, a few nights after the staff meeting about the Boston school, I found Summers outside around nine in the evening with flood-lamps and some of the older boys, digging holes beside and under the paved drive leading up to the mansion. He was working as hard as the rest of them, sweating heavily in the cool night air. Pacing up to him, I asked, "What in hell are you doing?"

"Setting a few surprises if anyone invades." And he pointed off to his left.

_Mines._

"Goddamn. Mines are fucking dangerous, One Eye."

"I know. But they're asleep right now. Hank and I rigged a way to wake them remotely if we need to. I have a few more surprises planted around the mansion and grounds."

"Like?" I was curious.

"The lake dock is set to blow, and there are more mines along the bank, to prevent beaching. Hank is setting up concealed anti-aircraft turrets on the roof and some grenade launchers. I'm adding an electrical fence on top of the walls, and I've even set up the stalls in the barn to release and then spook the horses, so they'll stampede."

"_Stampeding horses?_"

"Element of surprise. Something they won't expect. And I wouldn't want the horses stuck in the barn anyway."

"Why not? They'd be safer there than running down a special ops unit." He didn't reply to that, just returned to digging while I watched his back. Abruptly, his shovel hit a large rock and he bent down to remove it. I squatted, too, whispered, "What in hell did you do to the mansion, that the horses would be safer charging men with sub-machine guns, than staying locked in the barn?"

He shook his head. "I'm setting up what I hope I won't need to use." He got hold of one edge of the dirty-grey stone and tugged at it, raising it a bit.

"All this" - I gestured to take in the mines along the road and the hulking shadow of the mansion itself in the distance - "is more than a defense, kid."

Summers dropped the rock and turned his head slightly, spoke even lower. "I talked with Frank after the meeting. He's been putting a good face on it, for the professor's sake. This is Charles' family home, but it's not going to be here six months from now. Frank seems as certain of that as I've ever heard him about anything, and I've known him ten years. I'm planning a way to reduce an invading force enough for us to get the hell _out_. They caught me unprepared before." In the subway tunnels. "It won't happen twice, dammit."

"How do you know there will _be_ an invasion? I thought the wop said he didn't have a fucking clue. The mansion could burn down for all we know."

"We'd just rebuild from that, and a fire in the mansion would never get into the underground. Something's going to happen from which we can't rebuild. And don't call Frank a wop."

I snorted. "So why not move the kids to Boston and get them out before the shit hits the fan?"

"Because I can't protect them there. Here, I can. Until it's past the point of protecting. Do you know about Masada, Logan?"

"Heard the name, that's about it."

"Last stand of the Zealots in the First Jewish War against Rome. Rather than be taken, they all committed suicide."

I stared. "You're not - "

"Not literally, no. But I want _them_ to think so. You don't go after what you don't think exists. That's my plan. That's why I don't want the kids moved yet."

"Fuck," I muttered.

Before we could speak further, a car exited the garage and headed up the road, slowing to a crawl as it approached Summers' impromptu work detail. The Mercedes. One of the windows rolled down to reveal Marie's face. She waved. I could see through the open window that Kitty Pryde was driving and Jubilee occupied the backseat along with Dani Elk River.

Where in hell were they going?

"Hey!" I called. The car stopped and I stalked over, jerked open the door and hauled out Marie. "What're you doing?"

"Going to a movie," she said, perplexed. "_Matrix III_."

"Like hell you're going to a movie." Still gripping her by the upper arm, I leaned over to glare through the open door. "None of you is going anywhere off grounds. Get back to the mansion."

"Who authorized this?" Summers asked, behind me. He sounded no more pleased than I was.

"The professor," Marie told him.

"Godfuckingdammit!" I snapped and, still gripping Marie, headed for the mansion, dragging her protesting in my wake. "Finish the mines, One Eye. I'll take care of this."

Behind me, I could hear Summers speak to Kitty. "Do as Logan says. He's right; it's not safe."

"Chuck!" I yelled as soon as I was in the mansion door, still holding onto an angry Marie.

_I'm in my office, Logan,_ came Xavier's voice in my head.

Letting go of Marie, I turned to glare at her, cut off her current reproach with, "You're not going anywhere, unless you _want_ to wind up like Jeannie." Her espresso eyes went wide and she didn't reply to that. Relenting a little, I kissed her brow. "You girls can catch something on pay-per-view later." And I stalked off down the main hall towards the professor's office, slammed the door open.

"What in hell were you thinking?" I asked before he even had a chance to open his mouth. "Four girls alone after dark - not one of whom can hold off even Ro in the danger room. Four _alpha mutant_ girls, with healthy ova. Why don't you just hand them over to this consortium, Chuck?"

Xavier had folded his hands on his desk, his face gone hard. "Logan, there is no reason to assume that they are in any danger _at the present time_. Nothing has happened, and we cannot pin up the children here indefinitely. Tension is leading to fights. They need - "

"They _need_ to stay where we can keep an eye on them!" I rested fists on the desk top and leaned over it. "Our enemies are waiting for us to get complacent. Old trick. If you can't attack immediately before the opposition can mobilize, you wait until they stop looking for it. They're waiting. We can't lose our edge. Got that? And I don't give a rat's ass if there's tension. I'd rather a few fights than a few dead bodies. Or hostages. Wouldn't you?"

Behind me, the door opened and Ro slipped in. I glanced around, then turned back to Xavier, "Sending for the cavalry won't change my mind. And I don't even like her" - I pointed blindly behind me - "going off grounds, either. By your own report, they _know_ about her."

"I wondered what this was about," Ro said calmly, ignoring my distemper. "The girls came back very upset. Frank is down in the garage now, trying to reason with them." She gave me an amused glance. "I would stay out of Jubilee's way for a few days, Logan. She was looking forward to seeing this movie."

"I'd rather have a pissed off firecracker than have to bury another little girl."

Xavier studied me for a long moment. "That is what this is about, isn't it? You failed to protect Jean. You blame yourself for her death as surely as Scott does."

"Don't psychoanalyze me, prof. I'm not your patient or your student. Your asked me to stay here and help protect these kids, among other things. All right. I stayed." I leaned further over the desk. "But that means you _listen_ to me. If I say it's not safe, they don't go out. End of discussion. Or if you think it is so safe out there, why're you letting One Eye bury mines under your driveway?"

"There is a difference between precautionary preparations and reactionary paranoia."

"Not in war."

"We are not at war yet."

"Then what the hell do you believe happened to Scott and me? A Sunday stroll? We were _prisoners of war_, mister. POWs. Summers is so _freakin'_ messed up I can't begin to guess how many years it'll be before he stops twitching every time someone walks up behind him or touches his back. Or didn't you notice that? And he still won't sleep in his own bedroom."

"Neither do you. When you sleep at all."

"This isn't about me, Chuck. It's about the kids - "

"It is about you, Logan. It's about the guilt you still carry. You did what you could. Scott did what he could. Both he and Jean knew full well the consequences of their involvement with the X-Men."

"They didn't know shit."

"We knew more than you think," Ro said before Xavier could answer. "I lived on the streets for years. I have seen many things. I have done many things. Only a few children in this school are true innocents."

I spun on her. "Fine. You've seen things, you've done things. But have you ever gutted a man, Ororo? Felt his intestines slide out all over your hands? Or put a gun up to his head and pulled the trigger, watched his brains hit the far wall? Go ask Summers how that feels. He still hasn't dealt with it. He's just made himself forget about it."

Her face didn't change at all. "I have killed, Logan. I simply see no point in bragging about it. Neither, I think, does Scott."

"Neither do I."

"Really? Then why do you so constantly advertize how dangerous you are? Here, we are all dangerous, even the children. Scott, Jean, Hank, and I knew full well to what we have committed ourselves. Even Warren and Frank know. And while none of us wishes to die, we each realize it is a possibility. Why do you think Jean had her funeral planned? Do not patronize us, Logan. Help us with your experience, but do not patronize us."

"Listen to Storm," the professor said behind me. I snapped my head around to glare at him. _Have you forgotten that I am a telepath? Had I thought them truly ignorant of the possible consequences, I would never have accepted their service._ Aloud, he went on, "Yes, Scott is still deeply wounded. I would have traded places with him without hesitation, to spare him this."

He stopped and stared out the darkened window, his jaw clenching while he contained strong emotion. Then he went on, "He needs room to heal and I will give him as much as I can. But the world beyond these grounds is not so merciful. He knows this. It was his decision to involve himself in these new preparations for the mansion defenses. The defenses were his idea, in fact."

"Cyclops is back," Storm said, a smile in her voice.

"Not quite," Xavier replied. "But he is, at least, thinking about returning."

* * *

><p><strong>Notes:<strong> Black preaching is an oral art form which imperfectly transfers to the page. I've struggled to convey some of the rhythmic nuances and beauty that drives it, but as with music, it's something to be heard, not read. Thanks to the Red Shades list for a useful discussion of Scott's metabolism. And his natural gift for strategy and tactics (like his gift for geometry and space) is well-established in comic canon; I didn't invent it. Both the Latin American death squads and the Sanctuary Movement were quite real. If people want to know what was going on in Central America in the 80s, I cannot recommend highly enough the film _Romero_. _The Praxis of Suffering_ is the name of a book by Rebecca Chopp published in 1986. The allusion to the _X-Files _movie is deliberate. Thanks to Leila for our talk about Scott, Logan, and God.


	10. 9: Scott

**WARNING:** From here on out, brace yourselves. The rollercoaster is about to go on its downward spin, and as this story went AU on the second page with the death of Jean, all bets are _off_.

* * *

><p>I'm not sure who dreaded the first of May more - me or the rest of the mansion May Day. My wedding day, or it should have been.<p>

The week leading up to it was tense. People walked on proverbial eggshells around me, but oddly, I was looking forward to it as a corner to turn, a hurdle to leap. Once it was past, I could forget about it. I rose late that day, even by my standards, then went to the hangar to work on the Blackbird - anything to keep my mind occupied.

People have no idea what it takes to keep a plane like that ready for take-off. Ours isn't precisely an SR-71. For one thing, the flight deck - or cockpit - is larger, which means the body is wider. For another, it's a jump jet. That is, it has vertical take-off and landing capability - VTOL - like a British Harrier. And like a Harrier, it's hard as hell to manage, worse even because the basic body, which _is_ an SR-71, was never designed for VTOL. The balance is screwy. Logan had laughed at my landing out near the Statue of Liberty, but I'd like to see that son of a bitch set this plane down, much less make it hover or fly backwards. It's not a damn helicopter. The power it has makes landing it like wrestling greased snakes - apt, given it's nickname of Habu, or cobra in Japanese.

Just one bit of trivia picked up by an Air Force brat. And I can recognize every plane the USAF had in operation from 1982 to 1992, front, back, or underside. My favorite always was the Blackbird.

If all these birds have been decommissioned, the Strategic Air Command is a little touchy about where they end up. Each cost about thirty-four million dollars, and the molds were broken so that the thirty to forty Blackbird frames that were built are all there are. It prevented them from being copied. My father - retired test pilot and Air Force officer - would have conniptions if he knew we had one. He doesn't even know I have a pilot's license, much less that his eldest son is flying the same plane he did. I wish I could tell him, but I don't dare.

In any case, the Blackbird frame that Hank used is what permits our modified version to have the speed it does, and the altitude capability. We also chose it because it's a spy plane, designed to escape radar detection. Hank increased our invisibility further by using the same radar-absorbent materials found in the skin of a B-2 Stealth Bomber, among other things. I hadn't been kidding when I'd told Logan that if anyone could detect us, we deserved to be caught. Ours doesn't run at the speed a real Blackbird can - it's too big and wide - but we've passed mach 2 on test runs and once came close to mach 3. The engine and body must expand when superheated, so the joints don't fit flush. Thus, when it's on the ground, we have to keep pans under it to catch the fuel and fluid leaks. At a base, it takes a hundred people to put a Blackbird in the air. The flight crew is up before the sun to get it ready for a mid-morning launch. We don't have a hundred people at the mansion, much less a hundred able to service a 'bird. Hank, Ororo, Logan, and I spend a lot of our spare time keeping it primed as well as we can, especially these days.

That afternoon, I worked alone, checking seals along the wings and changing fluid pans. Then I moved on to the engines, which is what occupies most of my time on upkeep. This plane has three engines. The first, a Pegasus turbofan with four swivel nozzles, is designed to lift it up and set it down, then shift around to propel it forward. Once it's moving forward, the main pair of engines cut in: beautiful Pratt and Whitney J-58 air-breathing turbo-ramjets that let us reach a ceiling of eighty-thousand feet and approach mach 3. But most of what we use her for amounts to walking a greyhound with a toddler, and sometimes we don't even cut in the ramjets, just use the turbofan. There are days I want to take her up and open her out, just to let her play, but indulging my need for speed on a whim is out of the question. It's just not necessary to fly to London in under two hours most days. Yet I have flown her enough that she talks to me in the air, and I understand finally why my father loved to fly these 'birds. I breathe with this plane. She sings to me, whispers under my hands. Jean was never jealous of any woman, but she used to say I had a mistress of black titanium.

Ironic, that I was spending my wedding day with my mistress.

Rogue and Dani Elk River interrupted my intimate communion with the engines. They were so quiet, and I had on Sheryl Crow so loud, I wasn't aware of them until Rogue tapped me on the shoulder. She nearly got a screwdriver in her eye-socket for her trouble. I aborted the attack at the last second. "Sorry," I said. "But don't sneak up on a trained fighter." It was lame and we all knew it. I'd been a trained fighter before my captivity, too, but had never reacted like that.

"S'okay," she said, although I could see that she was shaken.

"We were wondering if you're coming upstairs tonight?" Dani asked.

I looked down at my hands, covered with grease past the wrists, and wondered what on earth they wanted. And I was sure they wanted something, because people had been actively avoiding me for the past three days. "I need to clean up first," I said, lifting my hands and reaching out to pat the girls on their chins with my greasy fingers. They squealed and ducked away, laughing, then sprinted for the hangar door.

"We'll see you in half an hour or so," Rogue called over her shoulder.

"More like forty-five minutes," I yelled back.

I finished what I'd been doing to the engine, then put back on the casing - quite a trick for one person - and went to wash up. I wound up taking a shower before wandering upstairs.

No one was in the den, where I'd half expected to find them. Instead all the kids left at the mansion - about twenty five total - had gathered in the dining hall . Despite my protests, Warren had moved the youngest children to his Boston location, taking them in twos or threes over the past two weeks, so it might have escaped notice, especially since there were only about a dozen of them. The nature of mutant manifestation meant that most of the kids we got were over fifteen.

In any case, when I entered the hall, the faces of the ones waiting were apprehensive. Jubilee, Kitty, and Rogue sat on the edge of a wooden table in the middle, with something spread across their laps - a big piece of cloth. I spotted Logan standing in a corner. I'm sure he was watching over Rogue. The professor was there, too, with Ro, Frank, and Hank. Every muscle in my body had tensed to bear whatever I was going to have to bear. And here I'd thought I'd escape this day relatively unscathed.

They were all looking at Jubilee. It must have been her show. I leaned into the jamb and crossed my arms, raising an eyebrow and waiting. She cleared her throat. Jubilee at a loss for words: would wonders never cease? "We, um, have a present for you," she began. "It was supposed to be for you and Dr. Grey - " Abruptly, her fair-gold skin went red. "I mean, um, I mean - "

"It was supposed to have been a wedding present," I supplied.

"Yeah." She glanced over her shoulder at Bobby, who just nodded his head at her, his face solemn. That explained a lot. Jubilee might be running the show, but Drake was behind it.

"And?" I said, trying my best not to sound snappish. I didn't succeed.

"We weren't gonna finish it," Rogue said, taking up the narrative, "but then we decided we might should. What's the point of letting it rot in the attic?"

"Rogue did most of the work," Kitty added, and taking the cloth from Rogue and Jubilee, she hopped down from the table to walk across and offer it to me. "Piotr designed the top and all the rest of us sewed on it a little, even the professor. But I think Rogue had to rip out most of our stuff and sew it all over again." Smiling, she glanced back at her friend. "We even got some of the pictures on the back from students who'd graduated already, like Mr. Worthington and Mr. Placido. So it was kinda a whole school project."

I took the gift from her and unfolded it to reveal a beautiful quilt, the top a pattern of interlocking circles. "It is from the Amish wedding ring pattern," Piotr explained. "I did change it a little bit." He'd put Xs in some of the circles, and the colors were red, black and white. Colors I could see.

I ran my palms over it. The stitches had all been done by hand, no machine work this. My God. It was a labor of hours and hours. How many nights had they sat up to work on this quilt, then come sleepy to class the next day? "It's beautiful," I whispered.

"Turn it over, Scott," Bobby said.

I did so. Drake rose to help me spread it atop a table, displaying the backing. It wasn't standard plain-cloth, and I had to sit down on one of the benches before my legs gave way.

They'd had it silk-screened with a collage of pictures. Jean was in all of them, but I was in quite a few despite my policy of avoiding cameras. The pictures marked the passage of the past ten years - this was the story of us, of Scott and Jean. Where had they found some of these? They must have snuck into our bedroom to go through our old photo albums. And EJ had to have supplied a few, too, from my college years. "I like that one," Bobby said, pointing out a photo where my hair had been long enough to brush my jaw. "We wouldn't have believed it was you, except for the glasses." It had been taken during Jean's visit to Berkeley to see me, in the spring of my final year. Jean with hair shorter than mine - "Easier to take care of on-call" - and dyed an artificial fiery red. We'd been caught candid, playing darts. I'd never seen that picture, or if I had, I'd forgotten all about it - though I hadn't forgotten that night. In the photo, I stood behind her, bracing her with an arm around her shoulders, my other hand on hers, helping her aim. She'd been leaning back into me, and side on, I could see that she'd been grinning like an imp. But from behind, I hadn't been able to see her grin at the time. It struck me hard, to see it now. She'd been falling for me even then.

But in truth, that hadn't been our _first_ date. Our first date - though we wouldn't have called it that then - had come almost five years earlier when I'd taken her to see _Phantom of the Opera_ on Broadway. And in one corner of the quilt back, covered carefully in plastic, were the old ticket stubs. The kids must have filched them out of our scrapbook. I'd been eighteen and trying to apologize for having wrecked her car, so I'd made a pact with Hank to get me tickets; I hadn't realized that nobody but tourists went to see that show. Nonetheless, she'd gone with me and said she'd enjoyed it. I don't think she was lying, but the show hadn't been the reason. Afterward, we'd walked around midtown window-shopping in a newly revitalized and Disneyfied Times Square, visited the rotating bar atop the Marriott to overdose on caffeine with coffee and Death by Double Chocolate cake, and then went to hear a band in the Rockefeller Center plaza. She'd laughed at my stupid jokes, and danced with me in the crush of the plaza crowd. And once, for just a few minutes, she'd let me put an arm around her. I'd lived in a glittering cloud for a week after, and I'd decided that night that I was going to marry Jean Grey. Stupid thing to decide at not-quite-nineteen, but I'd never changed my mind. Sometimes you just knew.

But I hadn't married her, had I?

"Can I be alone, guys?" I asked them. They slipped out quietly, vanishing like morning fog. Rogue hugged me from behind on her way and I gripped her arm atop her gloves, whispering, "Thanks, Marie. I'm glad you finished it." I felt her nod, then she was gone, too. They were all gone, leaving me alone with the quilt.

I spent a long time going over each of the pictures. Jean would have loved this. She'd always wanted a hand-made quilt. Had the girls known that, or was this just a lucky guess? "Look at what they did for us, hon," I whispered at one point into the empty room.

_"It makes everything else worth it, doesn't it?"_

I spun around, but there was no one there. "Christ, you're hearing things now," I said to myself. Folding up the quilt, I headed out and started to go downstairs, but changed my direction and went back to our room instead. This was where the quilt belonged - on our bed.

I hadn't been in here since the day I'd come to fetch my wedding ring, and my dirty clothes were still in the bathroom where I'd left them in a heap after I'd showered. I picked them up now and dumped them in the hamper. Then I just stood there in the middle of the room, the quilt over my arm. Unfolding it, I laid it out on the bed, then collapsed atop and wrapped myself up in it. That was when I cried.

I'd gone all day without crying - mostly by dint of distraction. Now, it hit me full force and I cried until my belly hurt and my face was raw. This should've been my wedding night. I'd waited for this for nine years; I'd waited for Jean. Frank, our resident Italian romantic, had told me once that Jean and I had the love affair of a lifetime. Maybe so. But when it's gone, what's left? Lightening doesn't strike the same place twice.

So I cried myself to sleep and woke again with the moon at its zenith. The room was faintly white from reflected light coming through our east window - one of the outdoor security spots. It fell on the bed and quilt, still wrapped around my body. It fell, too, on the body beside mine.

At the funeral, I'd asked Logan if he believed in ghosts because I wanted to know I wasn't going crazy. I'd woken before to the smell of Jean, to a physical awareness of her pressing up against my side. Maybe they were hallucinations, but if so, I was happy to keep hallucinating. Yet none of the previous times had ever felt this real.

Reaching out - barely breathing - I ran a strand of her hair through my fingers. So soft. So fine and soft.

She moved and I jumped, caught my breath. Her body rolled over and her dark eyes met mine. Our faces were close enough that I felt her breath on my skin. Abruptly she smiled and raised a hand to touch my temple - no glasses in the way. "You have such beautiful eyes," she whispered and ran a thumb over my eyebrow. "So _blue_."

"How can you see them in the dark?"

But it wasn't the question I wanted to ask - the obvious question. Had I finally lost my mind?

"Shhhh," she said instead and kissed me. "I was waiting for you to wake up."

There was so much I wanted to say but it all balled up behind my teeth, tripped by my own inept tongue. I settled for the simple. "I love you."

"I know," she replied, still smiling, and propped herself up on an elbow. Then she reached down to hunt for my hand - my left hand - and raised it, kissed my knuckles and the ring on my finger. "I'm glad you put it on."

"It should have been you who put it on me. Do you remember what I said when we bought it?"

"Yes." And she pulled the ring off, had to tug a little to get it free. Then she sat all the way up and raised me after until we were kneeling in the middle of our bed atop the quilt, facing each other. She ran fingers over my cheeks, my neck, my shoulders and down my arms. I held my breath, afraid that at any moment, she might wink out of existence like a dying star.

This felt so real - not a dream or hallucination.

Don't think about it, I told myself. For once in my life, I wasn't going to analyze, just accept. If this gave me back my Jean, I didn't care what it was.

"Where's my ring?" she asked now.

"In my dresser."

"Go get it."

I did as she said, stumbling a little over the tangle of sheets trailing on the floor. And didn't that prove this was real? You didn't trip in your dreams.

My hands were shaking as I pulled open my sock drawer to dig for the ring box, fished it free and opened it to pull out the ring, then take it back to the bed. She still knelt there, turning my own ring in her fingers. Her hair was down and she was wearing a nightgown. Silk in some pale shade, maybe ivory. She smiled and took my free hand as I knelt down again in front of her. Leaning in, she kissed me and offered me her left hand, the hand with the engagement ring. I took that off and fitted it into the slot made for it in her wedding band, then slid the whole thing back on her finger. "You're mine," I whispered.

She laughed a little. "I always was yours." And taking my own hand, she slid my ring home. "And you were mine."

"I still will be, until the day I die."

"No, Scott." She looked up at me. "The promise was only till death parted us. It already has, love."

"Then I'll make a new promise," I said, gripping her by both her arms.

"I won't accept it. I'm not binding you with vows tonight. I'm only giving you the ring you should have had two years ago, if I hadn't kept putting you off."

I let her go. "I understood. It was okay - "

Her fingers stopped my mouth. "It was not okay. I was scared. Strange, isn't it? I was older, I was the woman, yet I was the one who kept putting off our wedding. So much for men afraid of commitment." She smiled. "You were so intense, so devoted. I wasn't sure I deserved you."

_"What?"_

"Don't laugh. It's true. You scared me. But I loved you, too."

"I never felt like _I_ deserved _you_."

Still smiling, she shook her head. "Silly man. You were my knight in shining armor. You kissed me awake from my curse, helped me find myself when I was drowning in others. You saved my sanity, Scott."

A sudden water-weak flash ran through me. "Was that all it was, then? Gratitude?"

She yanked me close and - her mouth almost against my mouth - hissed, "You _idiot_ ass! I loved you to the bottom of your dense, stubborn soul."

I didn't know what to say, so I leaned in to kiss her. If my kiss had woken her once, maybe hers would put me to sleep forever, a dream-world inhabited by two. My hands gripped her upper arms again, and hers were unbuttoning the black shirt that I'd fallen asleep in, the dragon shirt she'd given me for my birthday last year. Then her palms slid over my bare skin. After a minute, I pulled away and rested my forehead against hers. "Have I gone nuts?" I whispered, because I had to know. Her words had made it clear that she was aware she was dead. "Or are you really here?"

"Does it matter?"

"Yes."

"You're not nuts."

"_How_ are you here, then?"

"Who knows? I'm a telepath. Maybe the professor has a theory; I don't. For now, I'm here, but I can't say for how much longer. It gets harder every time. But I had to stay, at least until tonight."

I gave up being gentle and clutched at her, strong in my desperation. "Don't leave me, Jean. I can't live without you."

So it was corny as hell. I meant every word.

"Shhh." She stroked my hair, rocked me in her arms as if I were her child, not her lover - her husband. "Don't cry. You owe me a wedding night." She let me go and pushed me back, pulling her silk nightgown over her head to toss it on the floor behind her.

My throat went dry. "I thought I got to do that." My body had reacted, quick as a blush, to the sight of her naked skin.

Her smile was coy. "I'll put it back on, if you really want to divest me of it."

In answer, I bent to kiss her bare shoulder, let my hands fall to her hips and stroke up to her breasts. She got my shirt off, then my pants. And I made love to a ghost on my wedding night.

By whatever miracle or magic, or just by the power of my own desire, I had her one more time. And without the constraint of my glasses, I was free to love her as hard as I'd always wanted to. Janis Joplin, queen of the blues, had a song about that. When we were finished, I sang it to her. I held her in my arms and sang to her._ "I'd trade all my tomorrows for one single yesterday, to be holding your body next to mine. Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose - "_

"Sing something else," she interrupted. "I always hated that song."

"What do you want to hear?"

"Sing me Sting."

I laughed, but did as she asked - sang soft and low, in her ear. "_I dream of rain / I dream of gardens in the desert sand / I wake in pain / I dream of love as time runs through my hand . . . This desert rose / Each of her veils, a secret promise / This desert flower / No sweet perfume ever tortured me more than this . . . ._"

"You're morbid tonight."

"Can you blame me?"

"No." She stroked my cheek and said, "How about something else?"

Rolling onto my side, I tried again, _"No earthly church has ever blessed our union / No state has ever granted us permission / No family bond has ever made us two / No company has ever earned commission / No debt was paid, no dowry to be gained / No treaty over border land or power / No semblance of the world outside remained / To stain the beauty of this nuptial hour / The secret marriage vow is never spoken / The secret marriage never can be broken / No flowers on the altar / No white veil in your hair / No maiden dress to alter / No bible oath to swear / The secret marriage vow is never spoken / The secret marriage never can be broken."_

She was smiling now. "Much better." And she snuggled in next to me, ran fingertips through the hair on my chest. It tickled a little, but I wasn't going to stop her. After a long silence, she said, "It's time to come out of the basement, Scott. They need you back. Charles needs you back."

I didn't reply to that, just held her closer. Her fingers crawled up to thread through my hair at the base of my neck. "I can't do it without you," I said finally. "You're my compass, Jean."

"Yes, you can do it. You're the strongest man I know, to have survived what you did and stayed sane."

"I'm still not sure that I am sane."

Raising up on an elbow, she studied my face and traced the pads of her fingers over the echos of my bruises, first on my face, then on my body, as if she could erase my wounding that way. She kissed the burn scars, too, and the scars from the bullet holes, then slid a hand down my hip and over my ass. She hadn't done that all night and even now, sated and sleepy, I tensed up like steel wire as her fingers brushed over the base of my balls, up the sensitive perineum to my anus. But it wasn't pleasure that she elicited. I'd begun to sweat all over. "Jean, don't."

"Relax, Scott. Let me touch you there."

"I don't know if I can."

"Look at me, love. Keep your eyes on my face and don't close them." I did as she said. Her eyes were black in the shadowed room, wells swallowing light, swallowing fear. She made the dark safe. "It's me," she whispered. "You're okay. You're with me now and you're okay. Keep your eyes on my face. I want to see those beautiful eyes."

She lifted my knee onto her hip, opening me up to her. Her fingers were very gentle and she didn't try to enter me, just massaged the root of my cock and the perineum until I quit panting in fear, until it had started to feel good. She talked to me the whole time, kept me grounded in the present. She was the only one who could have gotten away with this. After a while, when I no longer felt on the verge of screaming, she moved her hand around to the front, rubbing my cock and playing fingers over the glans. It took a while to arouse me - the effects of fear barely surmounted and an orgasm already past, and I was twenty-seven, not seventeen. The hormones didn't burn quite so hot.

But my body did wake up. We lay face-to-face, breathing into each other's mouths and touching each other all over. Then she drew me on top of her and inside, her legs around my hips. There is nothing in the world like the feel of sliding into hot satin. I wasn't in a hurry, so I moved slowly and watched her face. Her palms had come up to cup my jaw. Sometimes we kissed, but mostly, we just looked at each other in the dark. I could feel her climax nearing, heard her breath go rough and catch, the walls of her vagina clenching around me rhythmically, thighs squeezing my hips to hold me still while she bucked up against me, trying to get the right friction and pressure. I bit my lip to keep from coming. I wasn't ready to let her go yet. When she was finished, panting down from her high, I resumed my rhythm. She ran hands all over my back and ass and I didn't flinch, though I wasn't under any illusions that everything was all better. She'd just desensitized me for the moment. She bit at my neck and jaw, my earlobe and lips, as her body undulated with mine. "_Come_, you stubborn bastard," she whispered. "I want to see you come hard."

Finally, I did. It started at the base of my spine and radiated down through my groin, crawled up my back. The sky was falling behind my eyes in streaks of flourescent color that I couldn't see otherwise any more. My toes curled involuntarily and I cried out. Her name maybe. Or a protest because this was the last time. Then it was past, and I sank down on top of her, felt her arms brace across my shoulder-blades, hands splayed on my skin. "I love you," I whispered, weeping. "I'm so sorry, Jean. I'm so sorry I wasn't there at the end. I closed you out."

"No, you didn't." Her breath stirred the hair behind my ear. "You just wouldn't listen to me. But you couldn't close me out, love. It wasn't possible. You _were_ there with me at the end. I felt you there. And you felt me go. Remember?"

And I cried harder. Because she was right. I had.

"Shhh, Scott, shhh. You're going to be all right."

I don't remember anything after that. I must have cried myself to sleep again in her arms because when I woke, it was morning. I was naked, wrapped in our quilt, and alone. The sun shone in through the window. Sitting up, I wiped hair out of my face and stared around. Everything looked bright and the light hurt my eyes a little. They were used to red shades.

I couldn't feel the energy in my head yet, but it would build back up soon enough.

Rising, I went to open the window and lean out, look down on the lawn. There was no one below. Sun scintillated across the reflection pool, and in the flower-beds, tulips and hyacinth were giving way to white peonies and red geraniums. Spring had come a little late this year, and the dogwood were still blooming, like grounded clouds, their petals blown by the wind. A few drifted lazily to land on the backs of my hands where they rested on the casement. I looked down. My wedding ring winked in the sunlight. Red gold.

Pulling my head back in, I took a deep breath. Had I dreamed it? I must have dreamed it. Or hallucinated it. I went back to the bed, ran my hands over the quilt. It was stiff in a few places, but that could be explained easily by a nocturnal emission without any ghostly intervention.

Turning my head, I looked over at my dresser, at the sock drawer. Standing up straight, I went to open it. The ring box was there, where I'd left it. I lifted it out, and started to pop the lid.

Then I stopped . . . put it back.

Sometimes, it's better just to believe.

* * *

><p>The professor was outside when I emerged that morning. He was supervising some of the oldest students as they worked with their powers, just as he'd supervised me once. We'd started their training a month ago, just in case. Hearing my step or just feeling my presence, he looked around at me. Eyebrows went up, then he smiled. "Good morning, Scott."<p>

"Professor." I squatted down beside him, resting one hand on the wheel of his chair, for balance. I kept my eyes on where John Proudstar and Kurt Wagner were pushing themselves through our second level obstacle course. Natural strength and natural agility assisted each, respectively.

"They've improved," Xavier said. "Do you want to show them how it's done?"

"I'm not sure I'm up to it yet, frankly."

He didn't reply to that, just nodded. He understood what I hadn't said: that I planned to get back up to it. We stayed there in companionable mostly-silence for a while. The only things we said were about the kids, where their strengths lay, and weaknesses. At last, still not looking at him, I began, "What I said to you, a couple weeks ago in the basement - it was way out of line."

"It's forgotten, Scott."

"Not by me. I'm sorry, sir."

He moved his hand down to cover mine where it still rested on the wheel of his chair. "I said it is forgotten. And don't you think it past time you quit calling me 'sir' and 'professor'? My name is Charles, Scott."

"All right. Charles."

He patted my hand.

* * *

><p>I saw one sunset and one sunrise without glasses before my power came back with a vengeance on Tuesday at dinner-time. I'd been feeling the build-up all day, the buzz in my head and the remembered pressure building at a point right between my brows. "You are frowning a great deal today," Ororo had said to me, around noon. We were both outside, sitting at an old stone picnic table under one of the dogwoods, grading homework that had been faxed in from the Boston school, and eating lunch. I'd gone back to teaching full-time on Monday, but spent as many of my free hours as I could outside, which was probably speeding up the reacquisition of my power but it was worth it to feel the sun on my bare eyelids and the wind on my blank face.<p>

"Headache," I'd replied then to Ororo's observation.

"Your glasses?"

I'd tapped my breast pocket. I'd been carrying them with me since yesterday evening. And I turned my face up to the canopy of fading blossoms over our heads. Simple white is a beautiful color when you know you're about to lose it again.

When my power did hit, I was in the dining hall, walking back from the kitchen counter where I'd picked up my supper plate. It felt like a lightning strike to my eyes - overwhelming pain. "Holy Christ!" I screamed and dropped to my knees, hands over my face, eyes squeezed shut against the agony and the force of the blasts. My plate and cup of coffee had crashed to the floor beside me and I could feel hot liquid seeping through my trousers but it didn't hurt half as much as my eyes.

Around me, "Scott!" echoed together with multiple cries of "Mr. Summers!" Then I could feel Hank's huge palm on my shoulder. "Glasses?"

"In my breast pocket," I said as - abruptly - the pain vanished to be replaced with that feeling of sparking energy, circling around in my head. God, I'd forgotten was this was like. Almost erotic when it first came, rushing through my body and charging my blood like the cocaine I'd tried once in high school. It gave me a hard-on. As much as I hate my uncontrollable power, I must also confess that I love it, love the charge of it. Hank was pressing my glasses into my fingers and I put them on and - face down - opened my eyes, feeling the energy flow out only to be dissipated by ruby quartz . I was momentarily dizzy.

Then my balance centered and I looked up. The kids had gathered all around me. None flinched back. How different from the last time, when my high school peers had fled in terror. Some of my students looked worried, but out of concern for me, not fear of me. "I'm all right," I said.

Abruptly Jubilee grinned. "Looks like Joe Cool is back."

Snoopy, of course. I laughed.

* * *

><p>An old rule of strategy states that, if you can't strike back at your opponent immediately, you wait until their vigilance has worn them out and they've lost their edge. That approach might have worked on us, too, without Frank's prescient-driven anxiety.<p>

So we were ready.

Theoretically speaking.

At the time of the actual attack, we weren't ready at all. It was two-twelve in the morning and most of the mansion was asleep, only Logan and I still up. I'd been reading a book in my room when the far perimeter alarms started whooping inside the house, and seconds later, Logan's voice came loud over my room intercom. "This one ain't a false alarm, kid. We got company."

Inside ten seconds, I had on my battle visor and was out in the hallway as kids emerged from their rooms in confusion. Some tried to pull on day clothes. "Forget clothes!" I yelled. "This is not a drill! Team Alpha get the professor to the basement, _NOW!_ Team Beta, to me."

Weeks ago, even before the young ones had left, I'd split the students into two groups. The largest - Team Alpha - were non-combatants, those who, like Rogue, had mutant abilities that wouldn't help them much in a fight. Their job, under Frank Placido's direction, was simple: they were to get the professor below ground and guard him. In truth, it was the basement defenses I counted on to protect them all, but it had made them feel important and gave them something to do to keep them from panicking. A few among them had gifts that might be useful in hand-to-hand, such as John Proudstar's strength or Fred Dukes' near-invulnerability, but we simply hadn't had time to train them well and I didn't want to use students whose mutations put them in grabbing range of our enemy. (Although I had yet to meet a person able to move Fred once he'd planted his feet.)

Team Beta consisted of my fighters. They gathered around me while the others disappeared, shepherded below by Frank. I could hear the sound of choppers in the distance, and a few seconds later, anti-aircraft fire. Hank hadn't lost any time getting to his guns, but he was going to need backup. I grabbed Kurt Wagner. "Get up on the roof and help Dr. McCoy. Do _exactly_ what he tells you to do, including run if that's what he orders. Don't play hero. Got it?" Yellow eyes wide, blue-furred tail whipping in fear, Kurt nodded and teleported right out of my grip. I grabbed my cell phone and was dialing before the stench of brimstone had dissipated.

The phone on the other end rang and rang. "Dammit, Warren! Pick up!" Had our enemy gotten to Boston first? But after nine rings, just as I was about to give up, I heard a sleepy, "Hello?" on the other end.

I wasted no words. "We're under attack. Get your kids to safety," and I hung up.

Logan was jogging down the hall to join us. "Four choppers, five vans, ten Hum-Vees and a few cars," he told me. They turned onto the Lane three minutes ago." He must have been in the security room. Cameras at the end of Greymalkin Lane recorded the approach of any vehicles toward the mansion. These days, if the visitor didn't have the correct codes to enter by remote, it set off the alarm system. That had meant we'd gotten alarms several times a week, but I'd rather have had UPS set off the alarm system than not be ready. "The Hummers have five men each," Logan added, "I'm guessing the vans hold fifteen to twenty. "Some vehicles split off from the main group to surround the estate walls."

Shit. An invading force that potentially numbered between two and three hundred trained black ops, and what were we? I glanced around at the faces watching me: four X-Men and eight kid trainees, including Hank and Kurt on the roof.

"Kitty," I said, "get down to the basement and bring at least our uniform jackets, including all the spares." We'd need the Kevlar. These people had come to capture us, not kill us, but a bullet in the shoulder could still incapacitate one of us. I ducked back into my room and grabbed the little radios I had ready, tossing them to students and adults alike. "Remember, the professor will act as our primary means of communication. Use these only in an emergency." Telepathy was the ultimate in line security, and one never had to worry about static, but I preferred to hedge my bets and not leave my people without a means of contact if anything should happen.

"When Kitty gets back, here are your orders. Storm, I want you up in the air to help Beast deal with the choppers. Be _careful_. And scout while you're up there to make sure they're not sending in troops that our cameras failed to spot. Wolverine, take Allerdyce, Jubilee, and Sharra to the front. Keep our 'guests' from coming over the walls, and when they break through the gate - I'm sure it's just a matter of time - stop as many vehicles as you can. Stop them permanently." I exchanged a look with Logan. He knew what I meant. We had to even the odds and taking out twenty men in a van was easier than getting them one-by-one after they'd debarked.

"Drake and Elk River are with me; we'll patrol along the rear wall. Pryde and Rasputin remain here in the mansion as backup. Now listen to me, all of you. If I give the order for you to scatter, I mean it. You get away from here as fast as you can, by any means you can. You've spent plenty of time in these woods; you know them better than the troops do. Whatever happens, do not let them take you." I hesitated, then just said it. "That means kill if you have to."

"Cyclops - " Ororo began.

"No arguments!"

Kitty had returned in any case, loaded down with uniforms. I snagged mine before anyone else could get it by accident, Logan took his, and Ororo took hers. Unlike the men's, the women's uniforms are all of a piece and she began to strip right there in the hall, to put it on. Modesty and Storm are at best passing acquaintances. The boys were gaping. "This isn't a peep show," I snapped at them, throwing my spare jacket at Drake. "Get into it. John, you have Logan's. Piotr, transform." He did as I ordered, becoming bulletproof organic steel in seconds. "Sharra, you'll have to wear Hank's spare." It would completely swallow him, and it was a vest rather than a full jacket, but it was better than nothing.

I glanced down at the women's uniforms; two uniforms for three girls. "Jubilee is about my size," Storm said and - dressed now - lifted her extra to hand it to the other girl.

That left Jean's. Picking it up, I stared at it. This was no time for nostalgia. "Kitty, we'll have to rely on your ability to phase." I handed Jean's uniform to Dani. "You're the right height. Put it on." Nodding, she accepted it.

_Welcome to the X-Men_, said the professor's voice in our minds.

We split up then, Storm taking to the air as Logan shepherded his three towards the estate entrance and I led my two out a back way. "Keep your eyes open," I warned as we exited into the winds that Storm had kicked up. Tree branches whipped and leaves rustled loud. Everything was growing dark, clouds skidding in to cover the fingernail of moon. That didn't help us, but it hindered them more. "Use your knowledge of the property. The main body of troops hasn't broken through, but that doesn't guarantee we don't have visitors on the grounds already." Bobby nodded grimly; Dani just pulled her bow off her shoulder. She's a tall girl, as tall as me or Drake. She looks like she can kick your ass, and she'd been fighting on the reservation since childhood, long before she'd become a mutant. Her first week at the school, I'd had to take a knife off of her three times. Of the eight kids I'd picked, she and Allerdyce worried me the least.

At that moment, Hank pegged his first helicopter. It exploded in a ball of fire out over the lake, went down with an audible whoosh. "Got 'em!" Bobby Drake yelled, his face exultant.

"Don't _shout_," I hissed at him, and Dani added, "There was a person inside, y'know?" Drake managed to look shamefaced, but I didn't have time to worry about patching up his feelings. I craned my neck, seeking the speck of Storm amid the dark, boiling clouds overhead. The sky convulsed in gale-force anger and the winds alone should have been enough to force the other helicopters away. Two had, indeed, fled, but one remained, despite being buffeted all over the sky. Crazy idiot. Lightning crackled around him to the staccato background of Hank's fire but none of the bolts struck metal. Storm was trying to frighten him. He hovered a moment more, then abruptly turned tail and got out of there.

If only we could have that kind of luck with the rest of them.

_Cyclops, _she sent then via the professor,_ I see no troops beyond those that Logan has already named. But they do have us surrounded. Now that the helicopters are gone, what next?_

"Try scaring the Hummers off," I said aloud, though speaking was unnecessary. I simply found it easier to verbalize, had done it even with Jean. "Blow over some of their vehicles if you can. Is anyone coming in across the lake?"

_None that I see._

_I can confirm this,_ the professor added. _ I sense no additional minds approaching, although I cannot extend my awareness far and also maintain contact with all of you. There are only so many things even _I_ can do at once._ Wry amusement tinged that thought.

"Storm, give me placements for the ones outside the walls," I said.

_Most are at the gate. Vans and cars. Hum-Vees are at four o'clock, two o'clock, midnight, ten o'clock and eight o'clock._ A simple, predictable pattern. _The men have exited the vehicles but appear to be awaiting something. None have tried yet to scale the walls._

_Cyclops, _the professor interrupted,_ I have also been in contact - by a secured phone line - with Walter Skinner, from the FBI. I wanted him to know what was occurring. He is on his way here from Washington, though I am unsure what he believes he can accomplish. Yet from what he has just conveyed to me, we may have more problems on our hands than we think._

"What now?" I asked.

_It could be that not all of these troops are human._

_Don't tell us they have mutants on their side._ It was Logan's thought, not mine.

_Nothing so simple_, Xavier replied. _ Assistant Director Skinner informs me that Operation Garnet utilizes some alien-human hybrids as operatives. These soldiers are virtually unstoppable. You cannot kill them by conventional means. Yet aside from heightened strength and regenerative ability, they have no other special gifts. This is why they want _our_ DNA. Imagine what such soldiers could do if they also had Cyclops' optic blasts, or Storm's ability to control the weather? Or mine, to control the minds of others?_ There was a short moment of hesitation. _ We cannot permit them to take us, my children._

"So how in hell do we stop these super-soldiers if they can't be killed 'by conventional means'?"

_By doing as much physical damage as you can. You cannot stop them permanently, but you can stop them temporarily. The length of time they are down depends on the amount of regeneration they must undergo. Just as it takes longer for Logan to heal, depending on the extent of damage to his body, so it is with these hybrids._

_In short, we make them mince-meat for a gut box,_ Logan put in.

_Thank you for that lovely mental image, Logan._ Hank's voice.

Abruptly, the front gate exploded inward, and at the same instant, Storm sent, _The perimeter troops have begun to scale the walls!_

"Time to end the chit-chat, people!" I shouted. "We've got a battle to fight!"

Almost instantly, Storm cast lightning down around the perimeter in roughly the places she'd said troops were located. I heard shouting and a few screams. _ Good girl_, I thought in my head. To Drake and Elk River, I said, "Go!" pointing each in an opposite direction towards the property rear: ten o'clock and two o'clock. "Keep out of sight, but stop as many as you can!"

* * *

><p><strong>Notes: <strong> There's lots of information out there on the SR-71 Blackbird and I pretend to no real expertise. Yet I have been struck, several times, by the complexity of maintaining such a craft, given the small number of people at Xavier's available for prep. It doesn't seem feasible, but then, this is science fantasy. :-) Information about Scott's father comes from the comics. Dani Elk River is the same as Dani 'Moonstar" from Generation X, whom we saw in the film (professor's office during the physics lesson), I have _not_ retained her last name from the comics; it's ridiculous. John 'Proudstar' was bad enough, but don't the people at Marvel have any creativity? Instead, I've chosen Elk River, an old Cheyenne name. The song lyrics Scott sings (in order) are from Janis Joplin's famous "Me and Bobby McGee" (written by Kris Kristopherson), Sting's "Desert Rose" (_Brand New Day_) and "The Secret Marriage" (_Nothing Like the Sun_). The latter is reproduced in full, with apologies to Sting. It's short.


	11. 10: Scott

Before taking off for the rear wall myself, I dashed around to see what was happening at the front gate. It had been blown in so that black iron hung twisted on the hinges. Yet across the gateway, the explosion's fire now roared out of control, forming a barrier more effective than the metal. Allerdyce. "Good thinking, John," I said for the professor to relay. "Keep them back as long as you can, but don't drain yourself completely." Then I headed for the rear as more lightning came down out of the sky. Off to the left - the direction in which I'd sent Elk River - I heard someone screaming in abject terror from one of her psychic arrow-bolts. "Storm," I called, "when John can't hold the gate any more, send in the rain - hard downpour. Let them try to drive in mud."

_Roger, Cyclops._

I'd reached visual range of the back wall of the estate and the infrared sensors in my visor showed me shapes near the top, working to cut through the electric fencing that I'd put up. A few tight-beam shots from my visor ended that, and without damaging the wire. I heard them hit the ground on the other side. They didn't try again immediately. I moved on, finding Drake by his infrared signature - one much lower than anyone else's would have been. He'd iced the top sections of the wall for a good three hundred yards and was working his way back towards the gate. Even if the invaders did get the wire cut, they'd have a hard time scaling that. "Good job," I told him. "Ice the whole of it, if you can. I'll police your section and mine." Then I headed back to check on Elk River. They were doing good, my kids. They were thinking on their feet, thinking of things I hadn't - Allerdyce at the gate, and now Drake with the walls.

Soldiers were trying to scale the wall again at the same place I'd shot them down before. How the hell long could we keep this up? Knock them down and they came right back. They weren't going to pack up and go away like the helicopters. This was an all-out assault, and they obviously didn't care what the neighbors thought. They were here tonight to take us, or kill us trying, and tomorrow there would be lies for the media. Was this what the men at the Alamo had felt, holed up in their fort in Texas? Or the Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, or the members of the American Indian Movement at Wounded Knee, surrounded by FBI and US Marshals?

What do you do when you know you can't win? It was just a matter of time before they wore us down and carted us off. Dammit, the professor could have reprogrammed their minds and sent them merrily on their way back to whatever rock they'd crawled out from under. It would have been hard on him, but he could have done it.

And I knew he wouldn't, not even to save himself. Not even to save us. He believed too strongly that there were some lines you didn't cross, no matter what. In his heart, he was still a Quaker. But I wasn't Charles, and I didn't have the same lines. I loved him still, admired him. But I no longer adhered entirely to his ideals. I'd been hurt too much, lost too much. As I'd told Ororo over two months ago, the old Cyclops had died in Baltimore. I'd become someone else, someone I wasn't sure I liked - he was a ruthless bastard. But he was going to save his kids.

Reaching up, I got hold of the little Xs on the collar of my jacket and ripped them off, dropping them on the ground. Then turning up the dial on my visor, I punched holes straight through the soldiers on the wall. The sons of bitches weren't going to get up again this time.

I moved on to find Dani. She had her own methods of troop control: psychic bolts and mirages. Fire ran along the top of the wall, glowing blue-white hot. It wasn't real, but the troops below didn't know that. Phantom fire glow reflected off her face. "How tired are you?" I asked her.

"Not tired at all. I can keep this up a while, just can't extend it very far. And if they figure it out, I may have to retreat."

"Do what you need to do. But Dani - don't let them take you." I didn't want to tell her about the ova harvesting, yet it bothered me to have any of the girls out here at all, even one as tough as Dani. It wasn't that the boys weren't in danger, but the idea of faceless men turning our girls into egg banks for insane experiments pushed me past rage into something explosive.

Now, Dani just said, "They won't take me. I'll scare them so bad, they'll shit themselves."

Grinning, I left her. If we got out of this alive, she'd make a potential leader.

In my head, the professor relayed Logan's warning: _Allerdyce is running out of steam, kid. Jubilee and Sharra are ready to give 'em a light show, but I don't know how long that'll keep 'em back._

I looked off towards the front. From what I could see, the fires were indeed much lower. "On my mark, tell John to cut the fires and head back to the mansion," I said in reply. "He can catch his breath with Kitty, and Peter can take his place for the moment. I think we've reached a point that we can't keep the troops out any longer. But I want to control their point of entry."

I heard a scraping sound behind me at the wall and glanced about. More climbers. They joined their fellows on the ground on the other side. "They're not making any real concerted effort back here," I added. "Mostly trying to keep us off balance. On second thought, send Peter back here to take my place. I'm coming to the front. Storm, can you hear me?"

_I am here, Cyclops._

"When Jubilee and Neal start the Fourth of July, I want you to strike the vans with lightning. By then, I'll be in range to blast them, too. And Storm, don't forget the rain. Dani - that means you may have to come up with something else."

_Understood._

"Beast? How are you doing?"

_Ready and waiting, Fearless Leader._

I snorted. "Fire at will as soon as the vehicles are in range, but then I want you and Kurt off the roof. Remember our surprise?"

_Ah, indeed._

"When you see it, get down to Kitty, so she can phase you into the basement if necessary. Kurt can teleport."

_And Allerdyce, if I send him back there?_ Logan's voice.

"I need John still. I just want him to rest for a bit. I'll let him know what to do. Here comes Phase Two, people. John - NOW!"

I was already sprinting back across the lawn. I could see Rasputin coming this way, his body gun-metal gray in the dark. The fires at the gate whooshed out, leaving startled silence. Then I could hear the enemy shouting orders, clear in the night air, and the caravan started forward.

That was when the rain came down.

It made mud fast; I found myself sliding and almost went down. At the gate, Jubilee and Sharra had cut loose with explosives and plasma bursts while Storm followed with spears of lightning. Yet they were still trying simply to scare them and refrained from striking the vehicles. That wasn't going to be good enough. Scrambling for balance, I got into range and hit the engines of the lead vans with a full optic blast. Two exploded, troops and all.

_Scott!_

That was the professor. I tuned him out. He could read my reasons out of my head. I aimed for a third van, hit it, but the troops had already bailed from all remaining vehicles. They had their objective - entry into the grounds - and they scattered like black roaches.

I had a few roach bombs ready. "Logan, get your kids clear, outside the walls. Quickly!" Things were becoming uncontrollable, fast. The invaders fired - at me, back towards the gate where Jubilee and Sharra had been, and up into the air at Storm. Yet they weren't aiming to kill. Bullet spray came low, directed at my legs I was sure their orders were clear: wound or contain, and capture. As with our knowledge of the grounds, that gave us the advantage as long as we were willing to use it. I was; I'd set my visor to full power. Running for the fountain's concealment, I heard Jubilee shouting in the distance. "Storm, get the hell out of the air!"

My order came too late. Over our heads, she screamed and plummeted out of the sky. Lightning exploded in random bursts, as dangerous to us as to the troops. The rain stopped abruptly.

"Storm!"

_I'm on it, Cyclops!_ Beast's voice. _Kurt, take over!_ I could see Hank's dark form practically throw itself over the edge of the mansion roof and down the side faster than a body had a right to move. Soldiers fired at him but couldn't hope to catch him. They were also running for the place where Storm had crashed. I shot at them to block their way, sending gouts of earth up in their faces, even while preparing to set off the mines. Now that they'd distracted us nicely, some men had returned to the remaining vehicles, which began to move towards the mansion once more. From the roof, Kurt fired at them, but without much success. They were armored against bullets.

"Stay away from the road," I warned everyone, via the professor.

I flicked back the first of four safety covers on the detonator I'd been wearing on my belt. Such a light press of my thumb, to set off the beginning of Armageddon.

All along the road, mines blew, and a few set out randomly in the lawn. Half the remaining vehicles went up - one van and two of the cars. A few soldiers were caught as well. There was much shouting.

"Surprise," I muttered. Flicking back the second safety, I pressed that button and air sirens started in the stable, screaming out into the night. A few minutes later, shadows burst through the stable doors. "Watch out for the horses." And I grinned.

_I've reached Storm,_ Beast sent. _Her arm is broken from the fall and she's unconscious, but the bullet wound is minor. It only grazed her hip. She'll be fine._

"Get her below. Get to the mansion and get below with Kitty and Kurt. Dani, Bobby, Piotr?"

_Here_, each said.

"Abandon your posts and scatter. I mean it. Piotr, punch through the wall and get them out. Run until no one's chasing you, then work back to the pre-arranged rendezvous point."

_Sir?_ From Dani.

"Don't argue!"

_Yes, sir._

"Logan?"

No answer.

"Professor!"

_He is alive, Scott. He's occupied._

"They need to get off the grounds!"

_I shall relay the message._

"Stay below, Charles. Keep everybody below and get John out of the building." The remaining troops had already reached the mansion. I saw one kick in the door. Others broke out windows and climbed through. Had Beast gotten back in time with Ro? "They've got men in the building. I don't know where Hank is, but Kurt and Kitty are in there and they need to get below."

_I will be certain that they do so, but what else are you planning - ?_

"I don't have time to explain," I interrupted. "Let me know when everyone is underground and secure. . ." I trailed off because I saw something new that scared the hell out of me.

Figures were emerging from the remains of the burning vehicles. Three of them.

Good god.

"Professor!"

_I sense them. Be careful, Cyclops. This is what Walter Skinner warned us of. And there may be more besides._

The three figures were black all over from burning, but it didn't seem to stop them. Triggering my visor, I blasted one to pieces. Little pieces. But before I could turn to a second, a shadow-figure had leapt on him from behind and they went rolling in the dirt. Light from fires all around flashed off metal claws.

"Wolverine!"

The third had almost reached me. I readjusted my aim, but never got a chance to fire. The figure was blown off its feet by a plasma burst from Neal Sharra. I could hear Neal screaming as he seared the figure over and over with balls of plasma. "You killed her! You killed her, you son of a bitch!"

Trusting Logan to deal with his own opponent, I raced for Neal, who'd lost complete control. There was nothing left of the third figure but wind-scattered ash and metal slag, yet he continued to blast away at full intensity. I grabbed him from behind - where he couldn't take me out by accident - and shouted, "Storm's fine! Cut it out, Neal! Storm's alive!"

The plasma bursts stopped and he seized up, then started shaking all over, collapsing to his knees. "It's not Ms. Munroe!" he wept. "They killed Jubilee!"

I knelt beside him. "Jubilee?" I turned at the sound of feet - Logan. We seemed to be the only ones still on the lawn. "Jubilee?" I asked him.

He shook his head. "They hit her in the leg and caught her. She panicked before I could get to her, and suicided. Took three of the bastards with her. I put her body where no one can find it."

I'd told them not to let themselves be taken, and they'd all seen what I'd come back looking like. This was my own damn fault. They were just kids. Of course she'd over-reacted. "_Charles, you didn't tell me!_"

_No, I didn't_, came back the simple answer.

"Why?"

_You had other things to worry about._

"How many more?"

Silence.

"Tell me!"

_Kitty, also. I'm sorry._

"Kitty?" Oh, God in heaven. My little math genius. Kitty, who didn't have a vicious bone in her body. "What about Hank and Ro?"

_Kitty phased Beast and Storm through, one at a time. They are here, safe. Then she returned to find Kurt, and her mental signature disappeared._

They must have gotten her from behind when she wasn't looking to know to phase. "Sons of bitches. Did Kurt make it?"

_Yes. He teleported in only a minute after Kitty had left to find him. He never saw her._

I looked back at the mansion, tensed my jaw. They were going to pay for this. "Logan, get Neal to safety off grounds. I'm going to find John - "

I didn't get any further. With a hiss, three gas canisters exploded around our feet. We'd been careless. "Tear gas!" Logan yelled, even as I felt the pepper sting on my exposed skin.

Yet against me, tear gas was the best possible tactical error. "Close your eyes!" I quit breathing, grabbed Neal and Logan, and ran. My visor seals to my face to contain the force of my blasts, so as long as I wasn't taking in fumes, I could see. Out in open air still windy and damp from rain, the gas dissipated rapidly. I was coughing a little, but otherwise, fine. I made for a line of bushes, practically flung the other two through the branches, and spun to start firing back in the direction from which the canisters had come - took out three trees and some ambushers in one sweep . Logan coughed heavily behind me, but his healing factor had taken over. It was Neal who was in trouble. We had no water to wash out his eyes and sinuses. He'd curled into a ball, coughing and choking and rubbing at his face. Logan tried to calm him down but to no avail. The remaining ambushers were firing at us once more, still not aiming to hit but trying to pin us in one place until they could ready more chemical weapons. "Logan - " I began.

"I know, kid," he said. "If they hit us again, we're in trouble. You get away if you can."

It was the wrong thing to say in front of Neal. I turned back to fire at the troops even as Neal jerked himself up and sprinted out from our cover, hands extended and plasma exploding at crazy angles, doing no good whatsoever because he couldn't see at what he was aiming.

They're just kids - Jubilee, Neal . . . And there's no way to know how people will react under fire until you put them there. The Danger Room isn't a real combat situation. I grabbed for Neal - missed. The troops might be trying to capture, not kill us, but solar plasma was more than they'd bargained for. And Beast's vest couldn't save him from their concentrated rifle-fire.

Seeing him fall, I let loose, taking out trimmed bushes, birch trees, a decorative bench, and troops. Then Logan and I ran to Neal, dropping down beside him and rolling him over. He was dead, dark eyes staring, blood trickling out of his mouth. "With Kitty, that makes three," Logan said.

"Goddammit!" I felt the tears start behind my visor and blinked them back. I couldn't afford to cry. "What the hell kind of leader am I, if I can't even stop one kid from panicking? I lost Jean. I got us captured. Now I've lost Jubilee, Kitty, and Neal!" My control teetered on the edge and I shivered hard, wrapping arms around myself and hanging on tightly as if I might fly apart otherwise. I was having trouble breathing, and my chest felt as if a great metal band were crushing it. I whispered, "I just kill people, I just kill people - "

Logan grabbed my arms and shook me, and I could feel the professor inside my head, trying to calm me down. I fought them both, Logan physically and Charles mentally. They fought back. "Snap out of it!" Logan was shouting. "Come on, kid, snap out of it. We need you."

"Leave me alone! I just get people killed!"

"Like hell! We need you, dammit! I need you; I can't do this alone. I haven't got your gift for tactics." Then his head jerked up, nostrils flaring. "The choppers are back." I heard them myself a few seconds later. And no one now to stop them from landing. They would bring more troops.

"There's nothing we can do," I said, and at that moment, I really believed it.

He yanked me close, put his face right in mine. "So _you're just gonna give up?_ You are right, then! You're no kind of leader if you give up!" And he shoved me backwards. I landed on my ass. "I'm going after the kids."

The fall knocked me out of my self-pity, and I glanced towards the mansion. I did still have some tricks left, and to quote Yogi Berra, It ain't over till it's over. There were no troops outside that I could see, though there might be men around back. It was time to end this. "Logan, don't go." He looked back at me. "This is it. Phase Three." I pulled myself together and stood up, took a breath. I still felt jittery and weak from adrenaline-induced panic, but it was passing.

"Most of their men are in the building. They'll have discovered by now that there's no one there. I don't want them guessing where we went. The sub-basement's best protection is ignorance of its existence. Scout the yard to be sure there are no witnesses when the backup arrives, then go after Drake and the rest. Meet them at the rendezvous. You'll need Piotr to help you dig out the basement eventually, but don't try until you can be certain that no one is watching."

"What're you going to do?"

"Find John, then give them nothing left to look for." Mentally, I clamped down hard in a way that Jean had taught me to do, to shield my thoughts for a second and hoped Charles' attention was divided enough just now that he wouldn't notice. There were some advantages to having lived so long with telepaths. "Remember what I told you about Masada?"

Logan just stared at me a moment, then offered a hand. I gripped it. "That sounds more like you, kid. Good luck and give 'em hell. I'll see you at the rendezvous." And he was gone, fading into the trees like the animal he almost is. A predator with the soul of a man.

"Good bye, Logan."

I went after John then, using the professor's telepathy and my infrared sensors to lead me to him. I ran across a horse on the way, one of the mares, and smacked her hard on the flank to make her bolt. Maybe she'd find her way to a neighbor's stable. When I finally located John, he'd hidden among underbrush in the wild scrub near the northwest wall. His face was scared but resolute. Like Dani, he's a tough kid. "How's Bobby?" he asked as soon as I dropped down beside him.

"He's safe. How are you feeling, John? Up to a last show?"

"Yes, sir."

"Good." This was the part I'd been hiding even from the professor, and with a half-formed mental apology, raised my shields permanently. There were no more orders to give, no reason to maintain a link, and I didn't want Charles to know what I planned next. He wouldn't approve, but he couldn't spare the effort to force my mind, even if he would have.

The choppers had arrived, setting down on the lawn and the mansion roof. Unclipping the detonator from my belt again, I flipped open the third safety of four. "Now listen. What I'm about to ask of you is unfair, John, and you have every right to tell me to go jump in the lake." I tried to catch his eyes, but like so many, he wasn't sure where to look through my visor, focused on my nose instead.

"What do you need me to do?"

"If anyone manages to make it out of the mansion alive, I want you to make sure the fire swallows him. No one escapes. Got that?"

He stared at me and swallowed. "I - Mr. Summers, are you _sure_?"

John isn't as apathetic as he sometimes wants to appear. "I told you it was unfair. Tell me now if you can't do it."

He swallowed again, but then his jaw hardened. "They killed Jubes and Kitty." He didn't know yet about Neal. "I can do it, sir."

I laid a hand on his shoulder, couldn't say, 'Good,' so I said, "Remember: I gave you this order; it's on my conscience. When you're sure there's no one left, I want you out of here. Make for the rendezvous point. Logan will protect you."

I glanced behind me, at the two helicopters on the lawn. The other two were on the roof, and the troops mostly inside the house. Good. Here was my own little twist on Odysseus' Trojan Horse. I hit the third button, whispered, "I'm sorry, Charles."

Explosions went off one after the other in staccato bursts. All over the mansion, windows blew out, scattering glass and streamers of flame on the lawn. Fire roared skyward, consuming old oak and mahogany; there was a lot of wood to ignite. Terrible and beautiful. That was my home, and I was burning it to the ground. God forgive me. I doubted the rest would be able to.

"Holy Christ - " John whispered beside me.

"Remember what I said," I told him and left the concealing shadow of wild scrub to begin walking forward. There were still the choppers on the lawn. Palming the detonator, I raised my hands over my head in apparent surrender.

"Mr. Summers!" Allerdyce hissed behind me. I ignored him and hoped he had the good sense to stay hidden. I thought he did. Drake would have come after me. Allerdyce was more pragmatic.

All I needed to do was get near enough to the choppers. Then this would all be over. Strangely, I wasn't afraid. I just hoped the pain was quick. Men ran forward, rifles at ready but not coming near me. They must have known who I was and what I could do. There were ten of them with sights trained on me. Kevlar couldn't stop that much concentrated fire and I kept my hands up, away from my visor. No sense in spooking them. With the mansion burning two hundred yards away, it was like a scene from Dante, cast all in red and black. Fitting. Let the damned take out the devil.

I heard them then. More helicopters. And weapons fire. Had they found Logan despite all his training? Three more helicopters, in fact. Damn. I looked up along with everyone else on the lawn to see where they were shooting at. But it wasn't anything on the ground at all.

Spotlights caught wide white wings spreading sixteen feet from tip to tip against a storm-black sky. Gabriel descending. Our Angel. Warren Worthington.

That fucking _idiot_! Who was guarding the other kids?

He was evading the choppers easily. They couldn't hope to catch him any more than they could catch a falcon. He led them on a merry chase right over the burning mansion, probably hoping for a backdraft to suck one in.

And then I saw what I wouldn't have believed, if I hadn't been looking right at it.

The flames rose up and up like a living being, like some great bird twenty times the size of Warren - a phoenix made of fire, with the face of a woman and the beak of a bird. She plucked a chopper right out of the sky, consuming it in a fireball burst that seemed only to add to her immense power. And then she _screamed._

John could shape fire sometimes, but nothing like _that_. The Firebird screamed again and beat her wings, sending the two remaining choppers spinning out of control as effectively as any wind Storm could have raised. One crashed into the trees outside the wall, and the other went into a death spiral down into the mansion itself. I could feel the heat from her fire-wind all the way out where we were standing around on the lawn.

"Holy fuck. What in hell is _that_?" I heard one of the soldiers mutter.

"I'd like to know the same thing," I replied.

And it was while everyone was distracted and gaping at the Firebird, that I felt a sudden rush of much cooler air wash over me, and then I was being lifted right off the ground at dizzying speed. A few soldiers recovered enough to shoot upward, but they were too startled to aim. Hand free, I adjusted my visor to fire back - rather more effectively. "Warren, dammit! Put me down!"

And it was Warren, of course. His relative strength to his size is the same as a bird of prey's - an easy thing to forget when looking at him. "Like hell I will!" he was yelling in my ear. "What did you think you were _doing_?"

"Protecting our people! What in hell are _you_ doing? Who's watching the kids in Boston?"

"Sean and Moira took off with them as soon as you called. I headed here."

"Put me down and get the fuck back there! I have _explosives_ in my jacket. It's the only way to end this, once and for all! They have to think we're all dead!"

"_What!_" he screamed into the teeth of the wind. "You jackass!" But he headed back toward the choppers. The Firebird was still raging over the burning mansion and tiny figures ran about on the lawn below us. Some shot at us. A few shot - illogically - at the Firebird. "Take the jacket off and drop it on a chopper," Warren ordered.

"That won't be enough - "

"It'll have to be enough! If you think I'm going to let you play the martyr, forget it! You'll break Charles' heart, you bloody cold son of a bitch!"

I thought about struggling - I could probably free myself if I caught him off guard - but the fall might kill me before I could set off the bombs in my jacket, and it would be too far away to do any good in any case. Not to mention that fighting me would distract Warren from dodging our enemy's fire, and could get him killed.

He was still yelling at me, "Get the freakin' jacket _off_, damn you!" and for once, I did as Warren said. It was a trick with his arms braced across my chest, holding me fast. But I managed and he swooped low over one of the choppers so I could let go of black leather. It fell onto one of the floppy blades. The troops were still shooting at us, but none thought to remove the jacket. It was just a jacket.

I slipped the safety off and hit the fourth button, triggering seven tiny bombs that I'd sewn into my jacket lining. Behind us, a great ball of fire bloomed outwards, consuming the chopper.

Warren was climbing altitude at a frightful pace and behind us, I could hear the blades start on the second chopper. They were coming after us. Shivering in the freezing wind of our speed and swallowing my nausea, I tried to make my mouth function. "Get behind the Firebird!" Whatever it was, whoever was controlling it, the apparition seemed to be on our side. And if this _was_ John, that boy and I were going to have a little chat later about concealing abilities.

Warren took my advice and aimed for the mansion, the helicopter following. I just hoped my hunch was right and the seemingly sentient fire didn't consume us as cheerfully as she had the choppers.

She didn't. One wing dipped down to let us zip past through black billowing smoke, then raised up again to block the chopper. It was insanely hot up here, the oxygen thin, and the fire's sucking pull of air was almost too much for Warren to fight. I was sweating like a pig and Warren's arms around me were slick. I hoped he didn't lose his grip as he beat his wings furiously. Too much of this and we'd be cooked well done, but there was no-where else to go. The helicopter had veered off to circle around, trying to get us from another direction. This pilot was no fool; he wasn't getting near the bird. I could hear a second set of engines, too. Damn. More back up. Did these people have no end of resources?

Of course not. This was the government, or as close as made no difference.

The chopper had swung wide, coming back in from the south, where Ororo's gardens and the maze had been. Both were on fire now. Warren was climbing once more, trying to get above the chopper's bullet spray and the sucking heat of the fire - and trying to lure the pilot back within striking range of the Firebird. But it wasn't working. He stayed put and the bird screamed in frustration, then tried to reach out with her beak to snag him, but he danced his chopper away. Damn, that guy was good. Or gal. Storm would tell me not to assume.

A sudden hooded shadow rose up from behind the chopper like a striking cobra. Black Habu.

The Blackbird, my mistress.

A missile turret opened and orange fire streaked out towards the helicopter. Caught between Firebird and Blackbird, the pilot didn't have a prayer. The missile struck, there was a second's pause, then the chopper exploded in a shower of twisting metal and tempered glass. Warren managed to turn to protect me, but no way could he protect all of sixteen feet of wings, not and stay aloft. I heard him scream and the world wrenched as shrapnel tore through his right wing.

Then we were falling towards the burning mansion. "_Warren!_"

"Sorry, Scott," I heard him breathe past clenched teeth. We continued to plunge down as he tried valiantly to lift us despite his shredded wing.

Seeing us fall, the Firebird screamed once again and lifted herself to spread wings and . . . tip them. Just so. Powerful hot currents knocked us end over end, singeing us good but tossing us well free of the mansion fire, towards the back lawn where the few remaining soldiers weren't. Warren tried to break the fall, but there was no way to soften it. We hit hard. I heard one of his wings snap and he cried out yet again. I was lucky I hadn't broken anything or gotten knocked silly. I must have rolled twenty feet and had barely picked myself up when the few remaining troops came tearing around the south edge of mansion. As soon as they saw us, they opened fire.

I shot back in a full force, wide-beam sweep. It blew them all to hell.

More shadows were coming around the north edge; my hand went back to my visor. "Don't shoot!" screamed a high, male voice.

Bobby Drake? What the fuck was he doing here? I recognized the others, then. Dani and Piotr, and St. John with Logan at the rear. They pounded up as I moved back to where Warren lay writhing on the grass. Dani was limping on what was probably a twisted ankle, but she didn't make a sound. That stoic Plains training. Nonetheless, she looked grateful to collapse to the ground. The Blackbird was setting down behind us all. "I thought I ordered you to head for the rendezvous!" I snapped at Logan as I helped Warren sit up a little and get off his wounded wing.

"And let you have all the fun? Forget it," Logan replied. He looked almost cheerful, despite everything.

Drake and Allerdyce had collapsed beside me, too, panting, their silhouettes dark against the mansion fire - which had finally started to burn down. It was just a fire now. No ethereal phoenix to be seen. "John," I said, "was that bird yours?"

"No, sir. I couldn't possibly do that. Maybe some day, but not now. Not even close." His eyes were wide. John - actually awed by something. "You can't imagine the kind of control and power that bird would have taken, sir."

Which was what I'd thought. Did one of the other kids have gifts we didn't know about, or were we getting help from unknown quarters? I remembered the woman's face I'd seen in the fire. It had looked almost like Jean. Yet she'd never had that kind of raw strength. Control, yes, but not that kind of strength.

_Scott,_ the professor said into my head. I was no longer shielding against him because there was no reason to. _ Jean had enormous reserves of power into which she had only begun to tap, reserves that I had to lock away from her when she was a child, because she wasn't able to control them._

"Are you saying that _Jean_ was the Firebird?" I asked aloud, and all around me, faces went blank with shock. Even wounded Warren raised his head.

_I am saying that I do not know what Jean might have become capable of. Had she lived._

And that was the catch, of course. Jean was dead. It couldn't have been Jean.

Could it?

_In potential,_ Charles went on, _Jean was a stronger psi than I am._ He'd never told us that. _I cannot say if that apparition was Jean. Nor can I say it wasn't. Yet it felt somehow . . . familiar._

I thought of the ghost in my bed two weeks ago. Jesus H. Christ. What had she become?

Hank was running up, Storm trailing with her arm bound and braced. Despite her injury, she must have played co-pilot. "More troops may be on the way," Hank said, expertly running hands over Warren to check him for further broken bones before scooping him up. "We must get to safety quickly." But we didn't get a chance to move before more soldiers fired at us from the cover of the west trees. I fired back as Storm whipped up winds and Dani Elk River pulled her bow from her shoulders, knocking a glowing bolt that she had drawn out of the very air with the power of her own psionic gifts. She let it fly, and had more luck than I did. She doesn't have to see her target to hit it, just be able to feel her opponent's mind. There were screams and a man came bolting out from cover, followed by two more. One carried something. A body. We dashed across the lawn to surround them and take their weapons as Hank carried Warren back to the Blackbird with Dani limping beside him. We didn't have much time. Released from Dani's control, and unarmed, the men raised hands in surrender. Logan recovered the body.

"It's Kitty," he said, jerked his head around to meet my eyes. "She's alive! I think they just knocked her out when she wasn't looking."

That would have been the only way to capture her. And it also explained why the professor had lost mental contact with her; his powers were too extended at the moment to read an unconscious mind. I glared at the three waiting on the lawn. Looking at my face, or Logan's, I'm sure they realized they were dead men, but one held out his hands to me anyway, desperate. "I have two little girls at home. Please! If you have any kids of your own, you know . . . . Please!"

"I have a whole school full of kids to protect, you son of a bitch." I raised my hand to my visor.

Bobby grabbed my arm and wrenched it down. "Scott, what are you doing?"

"He's doing what he has to do, Drake," Logan said. "Let him go."

"We can't let them live," I explained. "It needs to look like we suicided rather than be taken. If they think we're alive, they'll never stop looking for us. These three know we're alive."

The man had quit pleading, but now dropped his head and started to weep. His shoulders shook up and down. I remembered weeping hopelessly like that for Jubilee and Neal not half an hour ago. "So you're just going to kill them?" Bobby asked me, mouth twisting and eyes darkening as he looked at me. I don't ever want to see that particular expression of betrayal again on a young man's face. I remembered what he'd said to me when I'd been healing in the basement. 'You taught us how to _act right_, Scott.' And every claim I'd ever had to honor shattered into a million pieces as Bobby Drake - my little brother in every way but blood - turned his back on me. For the first time, I felt well and truly ashamed. How many people had I killed since Baltimore?

_There are always alternatives,_ whispered through my mind. It wasn't Charles' voice, just my own reviving conscience. That man was crying for his children like I'd cried for mine. And I made my choice. Maybe I wasn't Charles, but I wasn't Magneto, either. And for once, I was going to make Charles do it my way.

"Wait, Bobby." I closed my eyes so I could concentrate on putting every ounce of force behind my mental demand. I wasn't going to let the professor turn me down. _ We've captured three men out here, Charles. I need you to wipe their memories. Or I'm going to have to kill them._

There was silence in my mind; I could sense his resistance. But he could sense, just as clearly, that I wasn't bluffing. This was a battle of wills. _I'm not asking you to wipe their memories of everything - only of this night. Don't make me kill them. Please, Charles._

The resistance eased. _ Very well._ And I felt the sudden absence of his mind as he withdrew to focus his attention on the three men. His touch is so light, you forget it's there until he pulls out. All of us blinked and wobbled a little, as if regaining our balance.

"Get back to the 'bird," I ordered as the three men collapsed, unconscious, into the grass. The professor still wasn't back in my head. It would take him a bit to recover from the exertion.

We boarded the Blackbird and I settled into my pilot seat - Hank was looking after Warren - when the almost-forgotten communicators on our wrists squawked loudly and spit out Rogue's panicked voice. "Mr. Summers! Mr. Summers! There are men in the basement! Or things! Or something! They're attacking us!"

"Son of a bitch!" I yelled and shot a glance at Logan beside me in the co-pilot's seat. "How in hell did they get into the sub-basement? We left them in pieces! Even if they do regenerate, can they do it _that_ fast?"

"Who said it was those same three?" Logan snapped, already half out of his seat and headed for the hatch. "We have to get down there."

But he didn't make it any further than three steps before the very ground shook beneath our feet and sent sprawling anyone on the plane who wasn't strapped down. "What the hell!" Allerdyce snapped. "This isn't fucking California!"

"And that was not an earthquake," Hank replied. "That was an explosion in the sub-basement."

I'd already yanked my straps free and shot out of my seat to run to Kitty. "Wake-up!" I shook her. "We need you, little sprite!" More tremors rocked the plane. Storm was struggling forward to the co-pilot's seat. To Hank I said, "I'm taking Logan, John, and Bobby. And Kitty if I can wake her. You've got Storm, Warren, Piotr, and Dani. Get the 'bird up in the air, away from here. If you see more choppers or troops approaching, stop them before they get here." To Piotr - who looked ready to protest - I said, "You go with them. We might need someone able to punch his way into the sub-basement."

Lips thin, he looked away but nodded.

"Charles," I said under my breath, "What's going on down there?"

I got no reply.

Kitty was starting to stir. "Come on, Kitty Pryde," I said, slapping her lightly.

Her eyes fluttered open. "Mr. Summers? Cyclops?"

"We need you." More explosions under our feet. What in hell was happening down there? "We need to get into the sub-basement. They're under attack down there."

She could feel the tremors now herself and nodded, letting Piotr help her sit up. I hoped she didn't have a concussion, but her pupils appeared normal. "Out of the plane," I said to the ones I'd tagged for rescue operations. Logan picked Kitty up to carry her, letting her conserve her strength. We were a hundred paces away when the 'bird lifted off behind us and shot away. The ground convulsed twice more before we reached the remains of the mansion, and I still wasn't getting any response to my mental queries. The professor must be too preoccupied to answer.

The mansion was a brick shell now with a few fires going still and the scattered wreckage of a chopper. "Can you put out the fires, John?" Instead of wasting breath to answer, he closed his eyes and stretched out his hands. He doesn't need to do that, but it helps him focus. One by one, he took control and doused the burning. I looked at Bobby then. "We need a path. Don't cool it all, just enough for us to pass." He nodded and extended his hand, sent an icy mist forward and led us through, freezing the walls to keep charcoal timbers from falling in on us as we moved past. There were no more explosions under our feet, but I kept waiting for another to happen. I didn't see an obvious breach in the mansion floor, but it was impossible to see everything. When we reached the place where the hidden elevator had been, I told Logan, "Trash it until it doesn't look like an elevator shaft any more." I couldn't be sure the secret of the sub-basement wasn't past concealing, but there was no sense in leaving extra clues. He set down Kitty to do as I ordered.

I turned to her. "Can you take Logan and I down at once?"

She shook her head. "Not without maybe phasing one of you half into the rock."

Before I could even say, 'Then take me first,' Logan stepped forward to grab her hand. "Let's go, darlin'." He glared at me to shut me up, but I didn't argue. He was better at hand-to-hand.

They phased; we waited. It was only a minute before Kitty crawled back up through the floor, but it was a long minute. "There's nobody down there," she said and reached for my hand. I barely had time to breathe before she was pulling me through.

All I could think in those few seconds of passage was that Storm, conscious, could never do this. It was like being encased in stone. I couldn't feel, see, hear, smell or even breathe. I wasn't sure I existed. I wanted to scream but couldn't open my mouth. Then we were through and falling to the floor in the dim glow of emergency lights. "Main breakers are out, and maybe the generator," Logan said by way of greeting. He was crouched down, claws extended, waiting. "Nobody close by." A hundred yards further down the corridor, the metal wall had been breached and rock had fallen in, closing it off almost completely. I found myself wishing for Rasputin. Kitty had gone back for the boys.

"Do you smell anything?" I asked Logan.

"Lots of burning. Air's going bad fast without the ventilation system. John's gotta put out those fires as soon as he gets here."

I nodded. "Agreed. After that, we head for Cerebro. If the invaders reached the basement, everyone was to hide in there. It's the most secure place in the entire mansion."

It was Bobby, though, who Kitty brought through next, and we had to wait on John. As soon as he was down, Logan barked, "Fires. Out. Now."

He closed his eyes and concentrated, while I sent Kitty to phase through the stone blockage, see how far it extended and what was on the other side. "Be careful," I told her.

She was gone for ten breaths before reappearing. "There's nobody on the other side. The walls are all charred and it's almost black - most of the emergency lights are out."

"But no one's there?"

"No one's there."

"Back up," I told the rest, and blasted through the rock. We went on.

It was hot on the other side and smoke hung low, choking us. Bobby did what he could for the air, crystallizing smoke into cold ash. It fell and crunched under the passage of our feet in the unnatural silence of absent generators. A few emergency lights were humming, but that was all. The fighting was clearly over, and I feared what we would find. We reached the turn leading from Cerebro and the lab. This had been the heart of it; I could smell the iron tang of blood and charred flesh, and held up a hand to the kids. "Stay here." Logan nodded faintly in approval. God knew what would be waiting around the corner. We took it together, his claws out, my hand at my visor - prepared for anything.

But nothing shot or jumped at us. What was waiting was worse; I had to swallow back bile. Poor Rogue sat right in the middle of it - alive but her face blank in a mask of shock; the lights were on, but no one was home.

Logan disregarded everything to make straight for her as I stepped back and spoke to the three kids waiting around the corner. "Stay there. That's an order." They nodded. I don't think they really wanted to see. I picked my way then over rubble and bodies, some of ours, two of theirs. Those two were stretched out flat to either side of Rogue, and I began to have an inkling of what had finally stopped them.

They'd been prepared to regenerate after anything but the absolute death of Rogue's mutant touch. She'd simply absorbed them.

"Logan," I said, low. "Be very careful. They're inside her."

"I know. But Marie's still in there, too. She's fighting them - aren't you, kid? You can fight them. I know you can. Come back to me, sweet Marie. Absolutely Sweet Marie - I'll make One-Eye sing you Dylan."

And I would sing her Dylan, too. She'd saved us all. _But where are you tonight, Sweet Marie?... Not too many can be like you, fortunately... To live outside the law, you must be honest. I know that you always say that you agree._

I made myself look around then at the rest of it. John Proudstar wasn't far from Rogue, his lower body crushed under a collapsing wall. Lots of blood. He hadn't died easy. Further up the hall, not far from the bend beyond which the kids waited, Pietro Maximoff had been ripped apart. His legs lay in a different spot from his torso and his intestines had spilled between, glistening even redder under red lights. How they'd managed to catch him, I had no idea. I'd thought only Pietro could catch Pietro in motion. I knelt and closed his eyes. Magneto had sent his children to Charles to be protected, taught, and Charles had accepted that charge long before he and Erik had become enemies. You don't visit the sins of the father on the sons, and Erik had never asked for them back. He'd trusted us to protect them better than he could. How were we going to tell him that he'd lost his only son? I only hoped Wanda was still alive.

But it was at the back of the hall, up against Cerebro's door, that I found the worst of it. I dropped to my knees and touched the still, smooth skull, half buried under the bulk of Fred Dukes, who must have attempted to shield him at the last. I couldn't see a mark on him, but he was dead nonetheless.

Charles Francis Xavier. The man who'd saved my life, made me who I was, taught me everything of value. In bitterness and spite, I'd said he wasn't my father, but if that were true, why did I feel like Chicken Little under a falling sky? And why hadn't I felt him die?

I bit my hand to keep from sobbing, and heard a moan at my elbow. Fred, "the little blob" as some of the other kids had unkindly dubbed him because of his weight. He was still alive. His fat was his mutation; it made him nearly invulnerable. Nearly. His skull was a different matter, if hit hard enough. And it had been hit hard enough. He might still be alive, but not for much longer. He'd heard my feet, and the sound of my breath drawn in. "Is somebody there?" he whispered. Near death and severely dehydrated from blood loss, he'd gone blind.

"It's me, Fred," I said, kneeling down and stroking the hair back from his brow. It stuck to my hand but I kept stroking anyway, focusing on his face to keep from looking at Charles. "Can you tell me what happened?"

"I don't remember a lot," he whispered, voice cracking. I wished I had some water to give him. "It happened so fast. There were men down here, and then it all just happened so fast."

"Where are the rest of the students?" There weren't enough bodies here to account for everyone in the basement.

"They're with Mr. Placido, inside Cerebro."

I glanced up. The door was still sealed, if dented badly; they must be alive in there. But why in hell hadn't Charles gone with them? Why had he exposed himself?

Of course I knew why. He wouldn't leave the kids out here to face their attackers alone. He must have thought he could control these inhuman _things_ with his mind. He'd been wrong.

Fred was talking again, his voice growing more distant. "John Proudstar went down first because they set off a grenade to make the steel wall fall and block off Cerebro, before Frank could get us inside. John held it up long enough, but it must have been too heavy even for him. Rogue went to pull him out but it was no use. He told her to absorb him so she could have his strength. So she did, and stayed out here with us."

He stopped and I thought him gone because his blind eyes had slipped closed, but he continued, "After that, I don't remember. The professor was trying to control the creatures, but he couldn't. He said their minds weren't like human minds. Explosions kept going off. They were trying to pin us in. Pietro caught as many grenades as he could before they landed, and threw them back out into the other corridor, but one blew up in his hand."

So that was what had finally caught Quicksilver, his own miscalculation, just as John had miscalculated how heavy the wall was. But I don't think either would have made another choice.

"I don't remember anything else, Mr. Summers. The wall here blew out and I threw myself on the professor. A rock must have hit my head." In fact, a rock had half smashed his skull; I wondered if he realized he was dying. "Will the professor be okay?" he asked. It was so plaintive.

"The professor will be fine," I lied. Or maybe it wasn't a lie. Maybe it was better that he hadn't survived the destruction of his home, his dream. "You did good, Fred. Rest now."

He nodded and, his story told, relaxed. I stroked his hair until I felt his body shudder; his breath rattled in his throat, then stopped. I was the only one still breathing in the hall. Logan had taken Marie back with the other three. Rising up out of the devastation and wiping my bloody hand on my jeans, I went to the door of Cerebro, with its battered, dented X. Ironically, the retina-scan computer had escaped destruction, but I was the one adult at the mansion it couldn't read. Pulling out a little retracting tray, I laid my hand - the one with Fred's blood - down on it and let it read my palm print.

The doors slid apart to reveal Francesco, twelve kids, and three of the staff who'd stayed behind with us, including Frank's mother, Valeria the cook. Frank was holding a nearly hysterical Ilyana Rasputin on his lap. "It's over," I said, taking a breath and finishing, "The professor is dead."

Then I started crying.

* * *

><p><strong>Notes: <strong> Thanks to Jenn for info on St. John. See Jenn, I gave him something to do. :-) Also, there are kids mentioned here who were in the film but rarely appear in film fanfic. Neil Sharra (India-Indian boy - Thunderbird III), Fred Dukes (overweight kid - Blob), Dani Moonstar (American Indian girl in the professor's office - Mirage) . We also saw Piotr Rasputin (Colossus) drawing by the reflecting pool, and the American Indian boy watching the X-Jet take off was either John Proudstar (original Thunderbird) or his brother, Jimmy (Warpath). I'm guessing the fast kid on the ball court was Peitro Maximoff (Quicksilver) though he didn't have white hair. And although the professor in the comics sometimes seemed to be a mega-mutant, that's always _bugged_ me. I gave him limitations. Some things he _can't_ do, some things he _won't_ do, and he's not invulnerable - as the film showed. "Absolutely Sweet Marie" can be found on Bob Dylan's classic album, _Blonde on Blonde_.

As all comics people know, Jean died in _X-Men_ 100/101only to resurrect as the Phoenix. I've altered that, making Phoenix an aspect of Jean's own power that the professor had walled off, not an cosmic entity who stole Jean's physical form seems a lot less silly. But in my story, Jean is still _dead_. She's not coming back in a real, permanent physical form as she did in the comics. Oh, and Kitty's original code name was Sprite, not Shadowcat.


	12. Epilogue: Phoenix

I see the world now with a sight no longer mortal, and I wonder if this is how Scott felt, when he first opened his eyes again after his mutation had manifested, to find that nothing looked the same. And not just from seeing through the red of ruby quartz, but truly _different_. Shifted. Altered in a fundamental way.

I don't see as a mortal does because I shed that mortal coil. I'm more than a ghost, less than a woman. Or maybe I'm just something else entirely and I shouldn't try to apply terms that are imprecise. It's unscientific.

That thought amuses me. You can take the woman out of the lab, but not the scientist out of the woman.

So what am I? Ironically, I'm not sure that science offers the best answer. Science is a tool, a key to understanding the universe, but different keys unlock different doors and science won't open this one.

I am a spirit, discarnate, without form or substance unless I choose to give it to myself. I am a power being who was once a woman. It isn't something my own religious upbringing prepared me to understand well, and I have found myself turning to half-remembered conversations I've had with others down the years.

Dani Elk River once told me about the spirit world of the Cheyenne. They see reality as multivalent, full of degrees of power - a power which is amoral in nature. We all have it; what matters is how we use it. Like mutations. Power permeates all Creation, and human beings - mutant or otherwise - constitute but a small fraction of the complete web - one strand, not its center. I'd thought that a healthy view. We live in a multiverse, not a universe. Physics would agree with her, at least in essence.

But in that interrelated reality, there is room for all manner of beings: both of flesh-and-blood in the middle world, and of spirit in the sky world - power beings, spirit guides, and our ancestors. The Sacred Tree digs roots into the Earth our mother and branches up into the sky world, uniting everything. The scientist in me had wanted to smile with patronizing patience at her mystic imagery, but the part of me that glimpsed the dim - that part had understood. And now, I find her mystic imagery offers me a better language than science by which to talk about what I've become.

I am no longer Jean Grey. Death transformed me. I've evolved again, maybe: a mutant's mutant. I am a phoenix.

'_They are the eggmen / I am the walrus / Goo goo g'joob . . . '_

I must keep a sense of humor about this, you see, or I might start to think I'm a goddess, and we can't have that. I can kill with a mere thought, and that frightens me. But I can save a life, too, as I saved Scott and Warren.

Poor Scott. I want to hold and comfort him, give him strength now that he must carry forward Charles' dream. God knows, he's holding himself together by will alone right now, but I have no arms to hold him any more, so I must maintain my distance. It would be very easy for him to fixate on me, even in this spirit form, because he's like that, and his soul is so wounded. But he's mortal still, and I am not. The time we had together as a couple is past and he must move on. So I will keep my distance, though it breaks my heart. I gave him what I could, and I have saved for him what by all rights should have been reduced to ash in that last great conflagration that he set off.

"Mr. Summers? I found this. Look. It is not even singed."

I watch Piotr hold out our quilt to Scott, and stunned, Scott pauses in the frantic pace he's set to pull out of the mansion's remains before more troops arrive. With shaking hands, he takes the quilt, then presses his face into it, to hide his tears. He'd thought it gone. He'd told the other children weeks ago to put their mementos and valuables - things that couldn't be replaced - downstairs in the lab, or in boxes to be taken to special storage off the grounds. Most of them had done as he'd said, and so they could forgive him - a least a little - for blowing up their home to save their lives. He'd set aside some things of ours, too: that little pillbox of my hair, our photo albums, some of my jewelry that he wasn't ready to part with (the rest he'd given away to the girls), and my wedding dress. But he's been sleeping with the quilt every night.

"A part of the helicopter landed on your bed," Piotr tells him. "I found the quilt when I was moving wreckage. It was safe underneath."

I'd made sure of that. Just as I am making sure that reinforcements will not arrive until Scott and the rest are gone. Only three cars do I let through, and I bless Charles for the foresight of contacting Mr. Skinner. They will need his help.

Maybe I could have prevented the black ops from arriving at the mansion in the first place, maybe I could have prevented all those deaths. But I hadn't realized, hadn't grasped yet what I could do until I conjured a wind to hasten Warren's arrival and then merged with the fire - all to save my idiot of a husband, who would have blown himself sky-high to protect the rest.

I never could abide martyrs, not when there are other possibilities. And I'm not going to let Scott take the easy way out; I won't let him die to avoid going through the pain of healing. They need him too much.

I guess that makes me his guardian angel. Or his guardian something, anyway.

I will have to explore the limits of what I can do. And I will also have to explore the limits of what I _should_ do. I begin to understand Charles' quandary over the extent of his telepathic abilities. To have this kind of power . . . . Do I have the wisdom to use it?

Once asked who in all of Greece was the wisest, the Oracle of Delphi had replied, "Socrates." And when Socrates was later queried about that response, he'd said it was because he knew how much he didn't know. Charles told me that story. He lived by it. So must I, now. I am _not_ a goddess. I may see with a wider perspective - know and understand things that, when I was human, I didn't. But I still don't see everything. I'm not omniscient . Frank probably sees more than I do. And he kept _so much_ to himself. He's known for weeks that Charles wouldn't survive this. I think Charles knew it, too. I saw it in his mind, when he made the choice to remain in the hallway, when he cut his mental ties to all of them.

He isn't here with me. I don't know if he could have stayed after death like I did, but I felt his spirit pass over. _My children are all grown up_, he told me, _they do not need me anymore_._ My son will protect them now_, and he bade me farewell. I think he'd hoped that I'd accompany him. But I can't. I can't let go. I can't leave Scott. Perhaps I will be able to at some future point. But not yet.

So I 'sit' (or whatever it is I do now) in the lab and watch while Hank speeds through splinting Warren's broken and torn wings, and students rush around, packing bags and gathering their valuables under Ororo's direction. And when none of them are looking, a few bags pack themselves. And when Hank isn't looking, I move what he needs a little closer so he doesn't have to hunt for it. They're all too busy to notice, assume someone else did it. Someone else did. Me.

Nothing of value can be left. All our records were already duplicated and transferred to Boston, and Kitty is wiping from the computers anything that remains here. St. John burns all hardcopies. Frank tears apart Cerebro. Some of it can be packed, the memory cells, for instance, but most can't be. Logan will have to shred it into scrap metal. Other children do what they can. Some, like Piotr, hunt through the wreckage to see if anything is left worth salvaging. There's not much. The mansion was old and full of wood and other combustibles. Even the glass has been turned to slag. They move on autopilot, weeping silently at the scope of the changes made in their lives in less than an hour. Yet most of them have been through such devastation at least once before, when their powers manifested. They survived then. They'll survive again now.

The hardest part, Scott and Logan reserve for themselves: the gathering of the dead. They have taken them above ground. Bodies can't be left either, nothing to offer a DNA sample - even the dried blood must be washed or burned away. The bodies will have to be incinerated. Too bad that Neal is among them; he could do it far better and more rapidly than St. John, who is already so tired that he can barely stand, deeply in shock over the loss of Jubilee, and worried sick about Rogue - who is being looked after by Bobby and Dani in order to free up Logan. But Marie will recover. She's a strong girl, and has John Proudstar inside her to help drive away the remnants of the alien hybrids. But that is their battle. I cannot help. He gave himself to her willingly, and she saved him from a slow death of bleeding agony. John will always be a part of her now, both his memories and his mutant strength. She came to just long enough to beg Scott to cut a lock of his hair; she will braid and tie it to his red-tailed hawk feathers, and wear them for him.

I leave those below to rise up through the layers of earth as easily as Kitty could, joining Scott and Logan even as FBI Assistant Director Walter Skinner arrives. He is bringing a handful of his agents, those who work on the X-Files. X-Men, X-Files . . . Charles was always amused by that. "I am," he used to say, "the _true_ X-File." His little pun, though of course he wasn't. Mutants aren't unexplained phenomena, though I'm sure a few of us were investigated as that before our existence and the X-gene were widely known.

The cars approach slowly up the lane, lights on bright, picking out the skeleton of the mansion and the burnt destruction all around. I feel the shock in their minds, the doubt that anyone could be left alive. Scott and Logan hid at the first sound of cars. Now, the agents get out of their government rentals to investigate, and Logan prepares to attack them but Scott calls him back. "That's Charles' FBI contact," Scott tells him, rising up from where he'd been crouching behind a brick mansion wall, Charles' body still in his grip. "Welcome to what's left of Westchester, Mr. Skinner. Welcome to hell." Yet he sounds more tired than bitter. Weapons are holstered, claws retracted, and Scott stands with Charles' body as Skinner approaches. Another bald-headed man, though Skinner is not yet old. His shoulders are powerful with the strength of one who has led an active life. Charles told me once that he'd served as a Marine in Vietnam.

He closes his eyes when he reaches Scott and lays a hand on Scott's shoulder, says, "I'm sorry, Cyclops. I know the two of you were very close."

"I'm not Cyclops any longer. The professor gave me that name, and the professor is dead."

"So what name are you using now?"

"Scott Summers. The one I was born with."

How ironic. He has discarded his code name even as I, finally, have found one.

Skinner smiles faintly, and introduces his agents - a pale-eyed man named John Doggett, who is the essence of a police detective, and two women, pretty Monica Reyes, who is a beta mutant herself, though she doesn't realize it, and a serious red-haired doctor of roughly my own age named Dana Scully. Scott suppresses his double take. I would laugh if I had breath for such things. Scott, love, you are so predictable. But he's noted her wedding ring, and his own is still on his hand. He wouldn't be ready yet, even if she were available. Yet two weeks ago, he wouldn't have responded with a second glance, and he wouldn't have looked for a ring.

He'll heal. I could be jealous of that, but it would be so very petty.

Logan has gone below to finish bringing up the other bodies. Unexpectedly, Dana Scully helps. When he asks her about that, she explains that she's a medical examiner. "Dead bodies are my business." I think he's amused. She glares at him, unmoved by the memory of nine-inch knives in his hands. I suspect she's seen worse, and I think I'd have liked her, had we met in life. She, too, has a temper concealed under ice because men don't want to take 'emotional' women seriously. When you work in a man's field, you must learn to act more like a man than the men do.

Their business below complete, the rest are emerging now, too. Skinner takes charge of the evacuation and Scott lets him. He's so tired that he staggers a little under the limp weight of Charles' body. But he's not ready yet to release it, to lay it beside the others. He clings. That is why I must keep my distance. He is weeping again, but the visor hides it. He stares down at the bodies: Neal, Fred, John Proudstar, Pietro, and our once-sassy Jubilee. Plus Charles. Six gone forever. Seven, I suppose, if they count me, but I'm not gone. I pass behind Scott and give him a little of my strength. He is sensitized to me, and aware of my presence on some subliminal level, but it's not conscious. That, I can allow.

Most of the cargo is loaded into the Blackbird, and the children - who are still anonymous to the consortium - are split up between the cars of Skinner's agents. They will take them by different routes to Boston. Scott is not happy about this, but the Blackbird can't carry them all. Those who - like Kurt and Hank - are obvious mutants will go with him. Logan and Ororo, as well. I watch Ro cling to Frank for a moment and feel a passing pang of jealousy, but more relief that she did not lose him, too. He will drive one of the few cars that escaped destruction - the Mercedes. I always liked that car. It has a few scratches, but looks remarkably good. He will take Rogue, with Bobby, Kitty, and St. John to assist. And Dani, too, because Dani was John Proudstar's friend. Rogue should not be around anyone just now who isn't familiar with her unique power.

Everything is prepared and it is time for last things. Scott lays Charles' body amid those of his students. Five facing east, one facing west at Dani's instruction. The other students won't leave till they've seen their classmates - and the professor - consigned to the elements. Dani mutters that John should have been buried high, but she knows that's not possible. Overhead, a hawk screams in the dark and everyone looks up in surprise. "His brother has come to take him home," Dani explains. Maybe she's right. The hawk's mind is wild, but full of power. A multivalent universe. The sacred is all around us, if we could only see. Covered carefully and borne in Bobby Drake's arms, Rogue twitches at the hawk's cry. John has heard. Dani slips John's four hawk feathers into Rogue's fingers, and sings in Cheyenne. An honor song, a death song.

The four non-mutants watch all this curiously as St. John steps forward with his lighter. He looks to Scott, for permission, for forgiveness. Scott nods and John lights one corner of the blanket covering the bodies, and then passes his hand rapidly above them all like a benediction. The fire follows his will in a flashover. This way, no one must watch it creep, consuming them one at a time. The children hang on to each other as they cry, and a few gag at the sweet stink of burning flesh. Mr. Skinner and the other agents try to herd them away. It is not an easy scene for children, but they do not wish to go.

St. John is flagging; he cannot summon the strength to make it burn as hot as it must, hot enough to reduce bones as well as flesh to utter dust. I speak into his mind. _Let me help you, John. You are too tired; I will give you strength. Don't fight me._

He's so startled, he loses momentary control of the fire and it wavers. Scott shoots him a look. _ Who are you?_, St. John thinks hard.

_I am the woman in the fire._

_Dr. Grey?_

_Not Dr. Grey any longer, John. Dr. Grey died. Now, I am simply Phoenix. Let me help you. Have the rest of them move well back. But John, don't tell Scott about this._

I think he understands why. He's a smart boy, and he does as I say, orders the rest of them back. When they are all far enough away, I tell him to raise his arms - we must make this look good - and then I pour my power through him, twine it into his until it surges out in a great white burst. If he weren't so powerful already, this would fry his mental synapses.

The fire rises up and yellow-gold tongues lick the air like fluttering feathers. They go white-hot as we approach the necessary temperature. It is my power, but John's experience and training that contains it, keeps the fire in an unnatural circle until there is nothing left. It's over in the space of a minute, a final burst of glory.

They deserved more than this bedraggled memorial in the dark hours before dawn approaches. But it is the best that we can do. And funerals are for the living, not the dead. I should know. "Ashes to ashes, and dust to dust," Hank intones quietly as the fires whoosh out. "From earth we were created, and to the earth, we shall return."

"Amen," Agent Scully says, and both she and Kurt cross themselves, then glance at each other, a bit startled. Kurt smiles and automatically, Scully smiles back. There may be hope for us all yet.

Storm brings down the rain, washing away ash and blood, soot and tears.

It is at that moment that Piotr Rasputin returns from his final walk-through of the mansion. He is carrying something, a large square of oak wood. When he reaches the small gathering, he turns it so they can see, though darkness and rain makes that difficult. One of the FBI agents shines a flashlight on it, and a spear of Storm's lightning streaks the sky overhead.

It is from the main staircase banister: Piotr's design, carved by Scott's eyes. Fire has blackened it badly, though it remains mostly intact. A dragon coiling around an X and the words beneath - _Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters._

Reaching out, Scott drags fingertips over it. "How on earth did this survive?" I know that he is thinking of our quilt.

But I had nothing to do with this. Some things are simply an act of fate.

* * *

><p>Five months have passed since the mansion was destroyed in the early morning hours of a mid-May night. The media spin was predictable: Xavier's academy was named the base of secret operations for the mythic 'Mutant Rights Organization' which had been accused of destroying the bunker in Maryland. The newsreels make much of previous mass suicide examples, such as Jim Jones or the Branch-Dravidians. The stain of fanaticism by association is intentional. The public was told there had been no survivors, yet Scott, Ororo and Logan's names have all been placed on lists of FBI's Most Wanted - just in case. They remain on the run, with fake identities secured for them by Mr. Skinner, and subtle changes in appearance. Scott let his hair go shaggy and grew back his beard; he has new glasses, too, more round, which Hank managed to coat with iridescent blue mirror, concealing the red quartz. Ro dyed her glorious hair to predictable black-brown, oils it and braids it to conceal the fact that it's straight by nature, not from chemical assistance. Logan, being Logan, changed nothing. Xavier's fortune, which was supposed to have gone to Scott as trustee, devolved on Hank instead. How his name managed to stay off the wanted lists, I don't know. Warren and Frank - as well as the children - remain unknown entities, but several have changed their names anyway. Kitty Pryde's parents even gave her a funeral, and now call their daughter once a month under the name of Judith Silverstein. She will have to wait a year to start at MIT.<p>

Yet the passage of time means little to me. I find it increasingly difficult to recall what impatience means, and my memories of the flesh are fading. What was the feel of breath's rise and fall in my chest, the tickle-touch of dandelion seeds on bare skin, the green smell of thyme in the fields, or the tart-bright tang of ripe summer strawberries? I am even forgetting the taste of Scott's mouth. Maybe one day, when the last of these things fades, I will fade, too, or at least go where I feel no regrets. But for now, I remain, coming into and going out of their lives at increasingly long intervals. It hurts too much, to walk unseen in their world, it becomes too tempting to put on a semblance of skin and manifest myself. And that would do no one any good in the long run, least of all Scott. Least of all me.

But this day, I will join them for a while, even if they are unaware of it.

It's a few minutes after midnight, and they are headed for the beach, repeating a trek made ten years ago in the dog days of summer, sneaking out in the early hours of morning while Xavier slept. Scott, Warren, Frank and Ro. I didn't go that time. Hank hadn't gone that time, but they include him now. Standing outside in t-shirt and jeans, Scott throws a rock up at Hank's window in the third story of the new school's Boston brownstone. "You're going to break the glass," Warren hisses softly.

"No, I won't."

The window opens and Hank leans his head out. "What're you doing?" he asks in a normal voice.

"Shhhh!" say the four below. "You wanna go to the beach?" Warren adds in a stage whisper.

I can sense Hank's sleep-muddled confusion, then a huge grin splits his face and he starts to flip himself out his window to join them, then pauses. "Can Robert come?" he asks.

The four exchange glances. Bobby Drake hadn't gone the last time because he hadn't yet arrived at Westchester. But then, Hank hadn't gone the last time, either. They shrug in concert, and Scott replies to Hank, "Why the hell not?"

"Excellent. I shall wake him, and meet you below."

This is really very silly, but I think they enjoy it more for that fact. Ro and Scott let themselves be silly so very rarely, especially these days. As students themselves, they had snuck out to drive to the beach in the middle of the night, and now ten years later, they were bound and determined to have a wacky reunion in celebration of Scott, Ro and Logan's return home for a brief visit. Scott had news of what they'd learned about our enemies - human and alien both . If Rogue had gained nothing else from her absorption of the hybrids, she'd at least been able to confirm what Walter Skinner had told the professor. Even show-me-Scott and Warren-the-skeptic had a hard time denying it now. There were aliens out there who didn't want to Make Nice, and there were people hiding in the nooks and crannies of our own governments who wanted to use us to stop them. Big Brother knows best. _1984_ for the Twenty-first Century.

But conspiracies could wait. They would, unfortunately, still be there in the morning.

Tonight, Scott, Ro, Frank and Warren - and now Hank and Bobby - are sneaking out to the beach. Sean, Moira and Logan will be hugely annoyed in the morning when they find themselves all alone on a Sunday with over fifty teenagers. And Kitty-Judith will be annoyed because she wasn't asked to go. Next time, Kitty.

Hank and Bobby emerge from a side door and, giggling like twelve-year-olds, pile into Ro's jeep with the other four. It's a tight squeeze, and it's a good thing I don't have a body or we wouldn't all fit. Someone painted "Beach or bust" on the back windshield in white shoe polish. Probably Ororo. Her quirky sense of humor shows up in unexpected ways. Scott is driving even though it's Ororo's jeep because he's a control freak, and he pulls away from the curb squealing tires like a crook escaping the scene of his crime. "The Getaway Kid," Hank dubbed him a long time ago. He's an excellent driver if one doesn't account for the fact that he never goes the speed limit unless he absolutely must. I used to tell him that he set a bad example for the students; he gave his mutation as an excuse. Yet he doesn't drive fast because of his unique sight. He drives fast because he likes to.

We've gone all of three blocks before we hear the roar of another engine gaining on us, and then a motorcycle speeds past to pull recklessly in front of the jeep. Logan, of course. Without a helmet. He and Scott play tag all the way out of town and it's a good thing Scott has the radar detector on, or they'd have gotten four traffic tickets inside five minutes. Then they are on US 6 south to Cape Cod. They'd wanted to go back to New York, to the same beach they'd gone the first time, but it's a five hour ride, from Boston. Cape Cod will have to do. We must arrive in the dark hours before dawn or Warren can't go shirtless. And Hank couldn't show his face at all.

Most of them doze as Scott follows Logan, or Logan follows Scott down roads that, in this congested area of the country, are never empty even at this hour. We make it to the beach a little before three, jump the curb past a barrier into a closed parking lot, and all pile out. Even at the height of summer, in this latitude it's too cold for most to go without a cover in the night air. But Bobby doesn't feel cold and tears off his t-shirt with a whoop, tying it around his head like a neon-watermelon turban. Then he leaps the decorative wooden fence and tears off down the beach access past sea oats to the water. Hank beats him there, even though Bobby got a head start.

"Somebody's going to hear them and call the cops," Scott mutters. Public beaches are closed at this hour.

Warren pops him lightly. "Just call me Mr. Paranoid," he teases, then removes his own shirt to stretch out wings that have healed at last, though they're scarred forever. A few feathers grew in askew, a few grew in black, and some never grew back at all. But now, they are more interesting, because they're not perfect. "Relax, man," and he leaps into the air to sail an updraft out towards the ocean. Scott, Frank and Ororo watch him go as Logan finishes securing Scott's bike and joins them. Together, the four pace down to the beach more slowly. I am with them, though they do not know it.

Bobby and Hank are splashing in the waves as we stake out a piece of sand on the deserted beach. Then Scott sits down to guard everyone's stuff while Logan takes off to go jogging and Ororo and Frank wander off arm-in-arm in the opposite direction. Probably to talk about weddings. She wears a ring these days and Frank has decided not to return to Italy. We need him here too badly. He and Hank are rebuilding Cerebro.

But just now, they've all left Scott. Not intentionally. They just didn't think about it. And Scott will sit here, their base and anchor, content to do so because that's his nature. Mostly. Despite his earlier worry about the noise, he grins to see Hank raise Bobby Drake over his head and toss him twenty feet further out into the waves. Bobby lands with a huge splash and a shout. I think part of Scott might like to be out there, too, but then who would watch the blankets, food, shoes and socks?

You chose well, Charles.

I sit beside him on the blanket, admiring his profile and his thoughts, both. I was attracted to his face from the first moment I saw him at eighteen. Such a pretty boy. But it was his mind that I fell in love with. Even so, I invade it rarely, although I swim through minds these days as easily as a fish through water. Yet his, I don't. It's not that I fear what I might find there: thoughts of other women, or not enough thoughts of me. There are no other women, and won't be for a long time. He has too many wounds from which to heal. And I know how often he thinks of me still. Yet there have been mornings in the past month when he has woken and I wasn't the first thing he thought about. And there have even been a few when he woke and went a whole hour without thinking of me once.

And that's a good thing. It's what keeps me, now, from drawing down the thread-light of stars to make a body for myself while I keep ethereal company with him on the blanket. It is enough to know that he sometimes feels my presence and it comforts him in a vague way. Yet my _visible_ presence would interfere with his bereavement process. Funny, how we tend to place stock only in things we can see and touch, and Scott is worse than most. He still doesn't quite believe that I gave him his wedding night, but he refuses not to believe it, too. He needs to believe it. That night is a tender memory for him amid so many that are sharp. He (and I, too) got what most of us do not - one more chance to say everything, to close emotional doors . Maybe I was wrong to do it, wrong to interfere in his life, but I don't think so. He needed something good to balance everything else he's suffered that has been so hugely unfair, everything he's lost. Even now, his shoulders sag a little because no one is watching, and he's tired and depressed.

And I can't resist. I move behind him to lay spirit hands on his shoulders, press my body-not-body against his back to hold him up. He closes his eyes and whispers my name, as he does sometimes when he feels me near. As with our wedding night, he's not sure he really believes, but he needs to believe, so he speaks my name and I wrap my arms around his shoulders and lay my cheek against his as the wind off the ocean whips his hair into my eyes. I don't feel it in the way I once did, but I still feel something. And I feel, too, how his body has relaxed a little, because I'm here.

He is the soul of the X-Men now. He must be strong for them all. He promised Charles once, that if anything happened to the professor, he would take care of them. And Scott always keeps his promises.

And that, I suppose, is the real reason that I remain, this invisible phoenix, even six months after I died. He must be strong, but he's so alone, and so sad, and if he finds a little extra strength because he believes that I haunt him, then I will haunt him until he doesn't need me any more. Passion springs from the flesh, and it's been long enough now since I had a body that I no longer crave that. But love springs from the spirit, and the spirit doesn't die. Kitty Pryde once told me of a lovely Jewish legend that says when a soul is born, seven possible mates are named. Six will make one happy, but if truly blessed, one finds the seventh, the soul mate. And if one finds the soul mate, then one is bound to him forever, even beyond death. The first one to die will await the other. That story appeals to the romantic in me. How else could I explain falling head over heels for a boy almost nine years my junior, pretty though he may be? In Scott, I recognized my other half. And I will wait on him.

The flat horizon is graying finally with the approach of dawn. Soon, early beachcombers will arrive and we must be going. Scott sighs and closes his eyes. I kiss his cheek and release him so that he can gather the towels, shoes and socks, and attempt to gather our people as well. Logan has returned, but Frank and Ro are still _in absentia_, and like children, Hank and Bobby whine about coming in out of the water. Scott waves to Warren, still overhead, calling him to land. But Warren only dips a wing in acknowledgment, then turns to head right back out to sea. He must make one last pass, because he's Warren. And Scott must curse about it, because he's Scott.

But Scott halts abruptly in mid-tirade as Warren climbs the wind towards the eastern horizon, rapid and fast - the eagle ascending - and moonlight scintillates opalescent across wide white wings . . . like a vision of possibilities, like a rite of spring in the shadow of autumn. Like Hope that Pandora let out of the box. We stand facing into the direction of the world, the direction of the rising sun.

* * *

><p><strong>Notes:<strong> A few _X-Files _regulars have cameos, but you don't need any knowledge of the series. (For those who do have it, yes, I've assumed Scully and Mulder finally married at some point; remember this occurs several years after events of season six). The native view of reality expressed here would fit most tribes, including the Cheyenne. Thanks to Naomi for the Jewish legend of seven possible mates for the soul. Kitty, of course, is Jewish. Finally, I know this isn't how Rogue got her super-strength in the comics, but this isn't the comics, and I never did like the whole super-strong/invulnerable/flying aspect because it made her a mega-mutant, and as I indicated with the professor, what fun is a character with no vulnerabilities? John Proudstar did die very soon after joining the X-Men in the comics; he probably has the record for Shortest X-Men Career Ever.


	13. Afterward: author's notes

**END NOTES**

**_Climb the Wind_** has enjoyed a popularity that I never foresaw, when I began it in March of 2001. It's won four separate awards and been widely recommended (and archived) in X-Fandom. Sometimes I think I should just introduce myself as "That woman who wrote _Climb the Wind_." More seriously, though, I'm hugely flattered by how beloved it's become. Readers have been wonderful - thank you. Also, for the curious, the final word-count would yield a book of about 220-30 print pages, so it's a short novel.

**Will _Climb _have a sequel?** No, it won't. I did toy with the idea for a while, but it wasn't originally plotted with a sequel in mind, and I honestly never expected the enthusaism it generated. But _CtW_ has a clear ending, and closure. It doesn't require a sequel.

**Acknowledgements:** To Crys, without whose medical assistance several chapters couldn't have been written, and to Naomi, for her editing, as always. Several others (Mo, Domenika, Robbi, Jenn, Anne) helped with specific information, and Katta was my 'test subject' for chapter one. I'd also like to thank all who faithfully sent wonderful feedback after each chapter's posting. **Feedback** is what fanfic authors live for, since there are no sales figures to tell us if people are reading, and no royalty checks.**  
><strong>

**Why (and how)**** the _Iliad_?:** I said at the outset that this particular story was based - very loosely - on Homer's _Iliad_. The parallels are more thematic than specific. The protagonist of the _Iliad_ is, of course, the great warrior Achilles. He's young and talented, forthright, loyal and honorable to the point of foolishness. He can also be cold, ruthless, and arrogant (although in that world, humility _was not_ a virtue). He was regarded as "the best of the Achaeans." (Achaeans = Greeks)

Scott is obviously my Achilles. And although there are _significant_ differences between the two, both are young and talented, and known for their loyalty and honor. Achilles despised lying even though he lived in a culture which measured a man's cleverness by his skill at deceit. If there's enough culture-gap between dark age Greece and the modern world so that parts of the _Iliad_ are puzzling for readers today, what makes it still a masterpiece after almost 3000 years is Homer's skill at showing the horrible cost of war, and his basic question - What drives an honorable man to atrocity? Can one's own sense of honor be as much a flaw as a virtue? (His answer is 'yes.')

This is the age-old tale of the hero's descent and his redemption. Achilles is the Mortal Hero. And so is Scott Summers.

Although I made little attempt to draw specific parallels to the original _Iliad_, there are a few. Jean, not Logan, is Patroklos, and her death is what sends Scott mad. Yet the warrior's comradeship of Achilles and Patroklos _is_ paralleled by Scott and Logan. In the _Iliad_, Achilles is publically shamed by the taking of Briseis - that's why he retires from the war in the first place. He's not being a spoiled brat. In _Climb the Wind_, Scott's rape is the equivalent. But in _Climb_, his withdrawal comes _after_ Patroklos' loss, not before. In the _Iliad_, Achilles' grief drives him into a descent from honorable hero to (amoral) god to (unfeeling) animal. He disregards all rules of combat, refuses to take prisoners for ransom, and kills without mercy. And he commits abomination on the body of his worthy enemy, Hector. (He ties it behind his chariot and drags it in the dust around the walls of Troy, within sight of Hector's family.) In Scott and Logan's escape from the bunker, Scott is both 'godlike' (one of Achilles' epithets) in his ability to hit his targets, and an animal in his treatment of his opponents. He kills without mercy and shows no remorse for the body count he runs up.

In the _Iliad_, it is not until Achilles' rage is exhausted, and Patroklos is mourned, that Achilles is able to return to the realm of humanity. There is even a 'ghost scene' on the beach, where Patroklos appears to Achilles to beg for burial, and bewails their parting. But in the _Iliad_, the great friends are not able to touch (much less take a final roll in the hay).

It is at the end of the _Iliad_, in the grief-driven supplication of the Greeks' great enemy - King Piram of Troy - that Achilles reclaims his human compassion. Priam is sneaked into the Achaean camp and Achilles' tent by the god Hermes. There, he kneels at Achilles' feet and begs for the body of his son, Hector, so that he might give him a proper burial. Priam appeals to Achilles' memory of and love for his own father, in order to take pity on Priam's grief. In short, Priam finds a point of human contact beyond the hatred of war. In the end, Priam and Achilles sit and weep together for their individual losses. Likewise in _Climb_, it's an appeal from an enemy who is also a father - an appeal about children - that revives Scott-the-teacher's conscience.

And although Achilles is still alive at the end of the _Iliad_, every ancient (or modern) reader knows that Achilles died at Troy; his days are numbered by his choice to kill Hector. In _Climb_, Scott does try to sacrifice himself, but is stopped, and it is Xavier who dies instead. So if you know the Troy story and wondered why Scott gets to live, it's because Xavier took "the arrow of Paris."

If you've never read Homer, do so (find the Fagels or Fitzgerald translations). And if you want to know where this story came from, read G. Zanker's _The Heart of Achilles: Characterization of Personal Ethics in the Iliad_ and Jonathan Shay's _Achilles in Vietnam: Combat Trauma and the Undoing of Character_.


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